Sobrecarga de cuidador e o impacto na qualidade de vida dos pacientes oncológicos em cuidados paliativos

Abstract

Cancer and its treatment are impacting both for the family, for the caregiver, and for the cancer patient in palliative care. As a result, there are several biopsychosocial changes and symptoms such as anxiety, fatigue, stress, exhaustion, social isolation, emotional instability and, above all, financial loss for the caregiver. These problems may be associated with the change in the caregiver's life routine in relation to the care offered to the patient. The caregiver, for the most part, presents an overload from the care provided to the oncologic patient and, this, can impact on the quality of life of these patients. This dissertation aimed to correlate the caregiver overload and the impact on the quality of life of cancer patients in palliative care. To this end, caregivers and cancer patients in palliative care of both sexes, over the age of 18 years, who signed a Free and Informed Consent Term (TCLE), were invited to participate in the study. For this, a sociodemographic questionnaire was used for caregivers and family members, a scale to measure caregiver burden in palliative care, Zarit Burden Interview (ZARIT Scale), and a quality of life questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL) to measure the quality of life of cancer patients in palliative care, which has been adapted for Brazil. Pain catastrophism and patient resilience were also measured. Data were analyzed according to the characteristics of the variables. Continuous variables with normal distribution were described using mean and standard deviation, while those with non-normal distribution were described using median and interquartile range. The analyzes were done with SPSS software version 20.0 (SPSS, Chicago, IL). The data from this study showed that patients in palliative care are mostly female and are characterized by low educational level. Under the analysis of the degree of dependence of patients on caregivers, they are expressed in more than four daily life activities. There was a correlation between caregiver burden and pain catastrophism and no association between quality of life and resilience was obtained. There was a negative correlation between the patient's quality of life and the caregiver's burden. The results of this dissertation demonstrated that oncologic diagnosis time and palliative care time were, respectively, eight and fifteen months, which translated the overload suffered by the caregiver, causing an impact on the commitment of the care offered to the patient, in their quality of life.