2024, Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part A

Background: Menopausal back pain is the most common public health problem throughout the world with high lifetime prevalence of back pain is 60% - 80% and India is among the countries worst affected. Application of hot water relieves menopausal back pain with the features like inexpensive and easy to use which is appropriate in community setting.

1)To assess the level of back pain before hot application among menopausal women in experimental and control groups.

2)To assess the level of back pain after hot application among menopausal women in experimental and control groups.

3)To evaluate the effectiveness of hot application in reduction of back pain among menopausal women in experimental and control groups.

4)To compare the level of back pain among menopausal women in the experimental and control groups.

5) To find out the association between the levels of back pain and selected variables of menopausal women in the experimental and control groups.

Methods: A true experimental pre-test and post-test design was adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of hot water bag application in reduction of menopausal back pain. The samples were selected by random sampling technique. Pre-test was conducted on first day followed by hot water application for about 10-20 minutes daily once for 3 days. Post-test was done on the fifth day. Data were collected with the help of interview method using investigator developed pain assessment scale. The data reliability was 0.941 and validity of tool was ensured before proceeding with data collection.

Result: In the pre-test experimental group, 15 (42.857%) menopausal women had moderate back pain and 20 (57.143%) menopausal women had severe back pain. And in the pre-test control group, 12 (34.286%) had moderate back pain and 23 (65.714%) had severe back pain. However, in the post-test, for experimental group, 24 (68.57%) had mild back-pain, and only 11 (31.43%) had moderate back-pain and none had severe back pain whereas for control group, 12 (34.29%) had moderate back-pain and 23 (65.71%) had severe back pain. The hot water bag application was found to be effective in the reduction of menopausal back pain at p<0.001 level of significance for 34 degrees of freedom, since within group comparison by paired ‘t’ test showed a ‘t’ value of 33.297 for experimental group which is greater than the table value, 3.646 at p<0.001 level for 34df. Comparison between pain levels of experimental and control groups by student ‘t’ test (unpaired ‘t’ test) shown significance as the calculated ‘t’ value of 19.438 in the post-test is greater than the table value at p<0.001 level for 68df. Significant association was obtained between pre-test level of back pain and age, occupation and duration of back-pain, similarly between post-test level of back-pain and age, duration of back-pain and dietary pattern in the experimental group. The level of significance was set at 5%.

Interpretation and Conclusion: Thus, the above result reveals that there is reduction of menopausal back-pain after hot water bag application in experimental group but no reduction of back-pain in the control group.