Activity of daily living

Activity of daily living (ADL) are the tasks that one does normally every day such as putting on clothes, brushing teeth and so on. These tasks are tend to be called skills that one learns in early childhood. This term is also used in a healthcare to describe people's activities in connection with instrumental activities of daily living. Doctor Katz set the concept of ADL in 1950 with his co-workers in hospital. ADL are dived into two groups: basic ADL and instrumental ADL (Table 7). Basic ADL include self-care tasks. Instrumental ADL consist of activities that let a person to live independently. Both ADL and IDAL are important for any human being to perform independent full living (Kernisan, 2010).

Table 7. Basic and Instrumental ADL (Kernisan, 2010).

There are different classifications of functioning, diseases, disabilities and health. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is used to examine the disease and classify it. ICD is a tool widely used by physiotherapist, doctors and researchers for health management, epidemiology and generalizing health situation among population. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a tool used for analyzing health and health-related domains. ICF describes health condition or impairment as the effect of body functions and participation influenced by social and environmental factors. ICF views problems with ADL as activity limitation, leading to participation restriction (Figure 8). Moreover, there are different categories for the non-specific low back pain in ICD such as low back pain, lumbago, low back strain, flat back syndrome and etc. ICF has classifications for pain in back (code b28013 Pain in back). For the chronic low back pain ICF uses several codes: b2800 Generalized Pain, b1520 Appropriations of emotion, b1602 Content of thought. (Delitto et.al. … 2012, 2)

Figure 8. Structure of Core Functions (Website of International Journal of Integrated Care, 2005)

There are different questionnaires used to find out the limitations of ADL in patients with chronic LBP. These questionnaires (Appendix 1) play an important role in treatment management and research. Roland Morris Disability (Appendix 2) questionnaire is widely used among patients with LBP. (Roland& Fairbank, 2010.)