Warm footbath minimize ostheo-arthritis joint pain on the elderly in Surabaya’s public health center

Background: Osteoarthritis joint pain is caused by degeneration process of cartilage bone and emphasized on weight bearing joints such as knees, hips, feet and the back. Warm footbath is one of hydrotherapies which used the modality of warm water to recover injury and minimize the symptoms of chronic joint problems. Objective: This study aims to analyze the impact of warm footbath therapy to minimize osteoarthritis joint pain on elderly. Method: This study employed a quasi-experimental design. The research samples were the elderly from a Mojo Public Health Center, Surabaya who suffered from osteoarthritis. The samples consisted of 20 respondents selected according to the inclusion criteria and were distributed into two groups, i.e. experimental group (n=10) and control group (n=10) by using purposive sampling technique. The independent variable of this research was the warm footbath while the dependent variable was the level of osteoarthritis joint pain on elderly. The data were collected by using The Western Ontario McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) questionnaire and analyzed by using Wilcoxon signed rank test and Mann-Whitney test with deviation level of p ≤ 0.05. Result: The result of Wilcoxon signed rank test identified that there were differences between pretest and posttest in the experimental group (p=0.004) and the control group (p=0.011). Furthermore, the research result provided by Mann-Whitney also illustrated that there were significant differences between the posttest results of the experimental group and control group (p=0.035). Conclusion: Warm footbath was proven to alleviate joint pain. The most dominantly declined osteoarthritis joint pain after a warm footbath was the pain resulted from standing.