G.V. Yakovets*
*St. Petersburg State University, Medical Faculty, Institute of Osteopathy
Summary
Osteopathic treatment of the patients with pain syndrome in lumbus and lower extremities definitely results in improvement of physical as well as psychological elements of quality-of-life index.
Key words: chronic pain in lumbus and lower extremities, osteopathic correction, life quality
Introduction
Over 50% of people of working age have in the course of life episodes of pain in the back, which have nothing to do with inflammatory, systemic, oncologic or metabolic diseases. Changes caused with lumbar osteochondrosis are detected with X-ray in 50% of people over 50 years old. Moreover, society and patients incur big economic and financial losses because of frequent hospitalizations and long periods of temporary disability. Nowadays, there are different methods of treatment for such conditions, including manual therapy. However, there is still a relevant problem - proper complex assessment of efficiency, including long-term efficiency, of any treatment method or complex of therapeutic methods.
Lately, interest for assessment of not just medical results of treatment, such as manifestations of a disease or their absence, but assessment of social and psychological consequences of a disease, that is how comfortable a patient can feel in the environment, including society, has increased considerably.
There are five principal generally recognized treatment assessment categories (G.I. Nazarenko, I.B. Geroyeva, A.M. Cherkashov, A.A. Rukhmanov, 2008):
- Vertebral column functions
- Medical condition in general (“quality of life”)
- Presence or absence of a disease
- Work incapacity
- A patient’s satisfaction with the result
Quality of life (QL) is an integral feature of physical, psychic, emotional and social functioning of an individual based on his/her subjective perception.
In this work a comparative analysis of qualitative results of osteopathic and traditional treatment of the patients with pain syndrome in lumbus and lower extremities is given. Within the limits of the analysis it was taken into consideration that quality of life is, first of all, determined by the way the patient assesses degree of his/her satisfaction with various aspects of his/her life in their connection with real or expected changes caused with the disease and its consequences and related to medical supervision and treatment.
On the basis of these ideas it was decided to prove that osteopathic correction is an efficient, expedient and preferable method of treatment of this pathology by way of studying medical parameters of a patient’s quality of life.