Background: The shift in age structure is having a profound impact, suggesting that the aged should be consulted as reporters on the quality of their own lives.
Objectives: The aim of this research was to establish the possible impact of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) techniques on the quality of life (QOL) of the elderly.
Sample: Two non-selected, volunteer groups of Rio de Janeiro municipality inhabitants: a control group (36 individuals), not using TCM, and an experimental group (28 individuals), using TCM at ABACO/Sohaku-in Institute, Brazil.
Methods: A questionnaire on elderly QOL devised by the World Health Organization, the WHOQOL-Old, was adopted and descriptive statistical techniques were used: mean and standard deviation. The Shapiro-Wilk test checked the normality of the distribution. Furthermore, based on its normality distribution for the intergroup comparison, the Student t test was applied to facets 2, 4, 5, 6, and total score, and the Mann-Whitney U rank test to facets 1 and 3, both tests aiming to analyze the P value between experimental and control groups. The significance level utilized was 95% (P < 0.05).
Results: The experimental group reported the highest QOL for every facet and the total score.
Conclusions: The results suggest that TCM raises the level of QOL.
Keywords: WHOQOL-Old; east-west medicine; elderly; quality of life; traditional chinese medicine.