Acceptability of an Acupuncture Intervention in Painful Elderly

Acceptability of a Strategy Including Acupuncture in the Treatment of MusculoSkeletal Pain in Hospitalised Elderly

The aim is to investigate the feasibility and efficacy of an acupuncture intervention on persistent MusculoSkeletar pain in a long-term geriatric hospital care ward population. The main issue is the acceptability of this type of complementary and alternative medicine in older people, although the efficacy on pain is assessed too.

The first 60 patients wanting to participate are enrolled. For the impaired patients, family or legal representing is solicited. The Regional Ethic Committee agreement was granted. The intervention consists in 8 acupuncture sessions.

Evaluation

• Acceptability : the proportion of patients who complete the whole treatment ; the acceptability at each acupuncture session is recorded.
• Pain : Dolorous Scale . The evaluation is based on pre and post treatment variations. As a high proportion of patients have cognitive impairment, the behavioural pain scale "dolorous" has been chosen after staffs training for all patients, although "extra " auto evaluation is used when possible (EVS). Evaluation takes place after 5 sessions and after the end of the intervention as well as 2 and 4 weeks after the interventionProfessional carers' satisfaction is recorded.

Inclusion Criteria:

• age > 60 years
• chronic musculoskeletal pain
• follow up 10 weeks
• patient or legal representative's agreement to participate and to the informatics treatment of the data

Exclusion Criteria:

• acute pain
• exclusive neurological pain
• coagulation disorders or anticoagulant curative treatment