Chronic pain in elderly caregivers at different levels of frailty.

Objective: To determine whether there are differences in the intensity of chronic pain of elderly caregivers who are frail, pre-frail and non-frail.

Methods: Quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study. The subjects were 187 elderly caregivers evaluated with a Multidimensional Pain Assessment Scale and the Fried Frailty Phenotype Assessment Components. Descriptive and comparative analyzes, Pearson's chi-square test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used.

Results: 24.1% of the caregivers were frail, 55.1% pre-frail and 20.9% non-frail. The only socio-demographic variable that differed between the three groups was age (p=0.03). Mean pain intensity values were as follows: frail elderly (6.98), pre-frail (6.38) and non-frail (5.85). However, these differences were not significant (p=0.150).

Conclusions: The present study did not find a significant difference in the intensity of chronic pain in elderly. Nevertheless, it is essential that health professionals and health care public policies give special attention to older caregivers.