Title of the dissertation:

Adherence to physical therapy rehabilitation and identification of barriers among elderly

patients with Low back pain attending a tertiary care centre in Puducherry

1. Research question(s)
i. What is the adherence rate of physical therapy rehabilitation among elderly patients
above 60 years of age with Low back pain attending the Department of Physical
medicine and rehabilitation in a tertiary care centre?
ii. What are the barriers in adherence to the treatment follow up among elderly patients
above 60 years of age with Low back pain?

2. Aims and objectives:

Primary objectives:

i. To estimate the adherence rate of physical therapy rehabilitation among elderly

patients above 60 years of age with Low back pain attending the Physical
rehabilitation in a tertiary care centre.
ii. To identify the socio-demographic characteristics associated with adherence.
iii. To identify the barriers in adherence to the treatment follow up among elderly
patients above 60 years of age with Low back pain.
3. Review of literature:
Ludwig and Adams (1968) reported only 44% of patients completed their
scheduled course of physical therapy.

A comparison of the effect of two different educational methods on adherence to

exercises for acute and sub-acute low back pain showed participants given written and
verbal information were more adherent (77%) to the exercises than those given verbal
information only (38%) (Schneiders et al., 1998)
 In a study of patient education in physiotherapy undertaken by Sluijs et al. (1993)
physiotherapists estimated long-term-adherence (up to one year following the clinic-
based phase) at 20% in comparison to 70% for short-term adherence.

4. Methodology

A. Study design: Hospital based Cross sectional analytical study

B. Sampling

a. Sampling population

– Elderly patients above 60 years of age with low back ache

attending the Department of Physical Medicine and rehabilitation.

b. Sample size calculation

- Assuming the adherence rate of 50%, and absolute precision of

5%, the calculated sample size is 384, at 95 % confidence.

c. Sampling technique

- Simple random sampling