PURPOSE Patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) report difficulty performing activities of daily living. To our knowledge, however, no study has directly measured performance in activities of daily living in these patients to systematically assess their level of physical disability. Moreover, the contribution of skeletal muscle weakness to physical disability in CHF remains unclear. Thus, we ...

PURPOSE This research combined cross-sectional and longitudinal data to characterize age-related trajectories in physical disability for adults with and without diabetes in the United States and to investigate if those patterns differ by age, gender, race or ethnicity, and education. DESIGN AND METHODS Data were examined on 20,433 adults aged 51 and older from the 1998 to 2006 Health and Reti...

OBJECTIVE To detect neuropathic pain in people who have had leprosy and correlate this association with the WHO Degree of Physical Disability classification (DPD-WHO). PATIENTS AND METHODS Data were collected from medical records, interviews and physical examinations of patients treated in 2013 in a regional referral service that attends 102 municipals. Clinical and general data, the DPD-WHO ...

OBJECTIVE To identify the effect of a novel augmented core stabilization exercise technique on physical function, pain and core stability in patients with chronic low back pain. DESIGN A block randomized controlled trial with two groups. SETTING A sports rehabilitation clinic. PARTICIPANTS Forty patients with low back pain (20 experimental, mean (SD) age 50.35 (9.26) years and 20 control,...