Guidelines on transfers in the reduction of chronic low back pain intensity of family caregivers in a palliative care ambulatory: pilot study

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of strategy of verbal and written guidance on transference in the reduction of low back pain in the family caregiver of patients in palliative care; the impact on the performance of the daily tasks of the caregiver before and after the intervention and whether adherence to the guidelines resulted in a significant clinical improvement of pain and performance in the activities. Method: This is a pilot clinical trial, performed at the HCFMUSP palliative care outpatient. Four family caregivers were divided into two groups. The intervention group received verbal and written guidance and the group controlled verbal guidance. The analysis of the data was performed by measurement of proportion and analysis of statistical significance by the Fisher exact test. The correlation between the variables will be performed through logistic regression. Results: Due to the small sample size, preliminary results on the efficacy of the intervention to reduce pain and increase performance in family caregivers did not demonstrate statistical significance. The descriptive analysis of adherence to the recommendations points to a promising tendency towards the feasibility of the educational intervention. Conclusion: The relevance of this pilot test is due to the preliminary evaluation of the time needed to recruit an adequate number of participants and the tendency of good adherence to the intervention. The difficulty of recruiting end-of-life patients is predictable due to reduced survival time and the complexity of care. The effectiveness of the intervention can only be demonstrated by adjusting the sample size.