Prevalence of Muscle Cramps in Elderly Women

Abstract

Muscle cramp is common among elderly women. A cramp is a rapid, spontaneous painful contraction of a muscle causing an obvious knot inside the muscle. Cramps occur for a few minutes and are sudden. Stretching of the muscle may relief the cramps. Cramps are painful and may awake patient from sleep, as well as delay from the rest.

Objective: To find the prevalence of muscle cramps in elderly women.

Methods: Cross-sectional study was conducted and data were collected from 150 women visiting different hospitals in Lahore, through non-probability convenient sampling technique. The collected data were analyzed statistically by SPSS version 21.0.

Results: The prevalence of muscle cramps among the participant were found to be 56.0%. Total 150 participants were observed, among which 66 participants did not had muscle cramps (44%).

Conclusions: The study concluded that muscle cramps were common among elderly women above 50 years of age, a small number of people showed more cramps per week, several of them had sleep trouble due to muscle cramps. Muscle cramps in elder women affected their social life.