Independence and cognition post-stroke and its relationship to burden and quality of life of family caregivers.

BACKGROUND: Stroke is a chronic disease responsible for changes in the functional capacity of the patients. Patient care is usually provided by family caregivers, but with great burden and negative impact on their quality of life.

OBJECTIVES: (1) To investigate whether a correlation existed between the levels of independence and cognition in stroke patients and the burden and quality of life of their caregivers; (2) to assess whether periods of injury, rehabilitation and care, and age of the stroke patients interfered with these correlations.

METHODS: This was a cross-sectional and correlational study that included 60 participants, of which 30 were post-stroke patients and 30 were their caregivers. The data collection instruments were the Mini Mental State Examination and the Functional Independence Measure for the post-stroke participants, and the Zarit Burden Interview Scale and the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF, for the caregivers. The Pearson's product-moment correlation was used for the data analysis.

RESULTS: Independence and cognition showed no correlation with the burden and quality of life of the caregivers. We identified a strong positive correlation between independence and cognition (r = 0.882), and a moderate negative correlation between independence and rehabilitation period (r = -0.398) and between burden and quality of life of the caregivers (r = -0.414).

CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest the need for health interventions aimed not only at stroke patients, but also at their family caregivers, given the association between the burden and the low levels of quality of life of the caregivers.