Influence of pain on the functional capacity of elderly nursing home residents and elderly participants in social group associations

Objective: to investigate the influence of pain on the functional capacity of elderly nursing home residents and elderly participants in social group associations for seniors. Method: this was a descriptive exploratory study. The sample was composed of 120 elderly men and women, residents of Jequié, Brazil, allocated to two groups of 60 elderly each. The first group consisted of elderly members of a social group for seniors and the second of institutionalized elderly individuals. The instrument was a structured interview containing four parts: 1) Sociodemographic and health characterization; 2) Pain-related aspects; 3) Pain assessment using the Numerical Scale; and 4) Functional capacity, measured by the Barthel’s Index. A descriptive statistical analysis was conducted using the chi-square (x2) and Fisher Exact tests, with a significance level of 5% (p-value ≤0.05). Results: the prevalence of pain between the populations showed high indices in the elderly members of the social group (88.30%) and the institutionalized patients (75.0%). With respect to functional capacity, most of the elderly from the social group were classified as independent (96.70%), whereas 70.0% of the institutionalized elderly were considered dependent. A statistically significant difference was observed between functional capacity and pain (p