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Burden in caregivers of spinal cord injury patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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Abstract

Background

Caregivers of individuals with spinal cord injury encounter high levels of physical, psychosocial, and financial burden by providing lifelong assistance. In the present study, we aimed to assess the overall burden score of caregivers in spinal cord injury by pooling different standard scores together as a review.

Method

Search on databases of PubMed/Medline, Web of Science and Scopus was conducted using PRISMA guidelines. Studies that assessed the burden of care using the caregiver burden inventories of CBI (caregiver burden inventory), CBS (caregiver burden scale), CG (caregiver), CSI (Caregiver Strain Index), and short- and long-form Zarit questionnaires were included in our study. The results were analyzed using the meta-analysis method and a random effect pooled estimator. All analyses were performed using STATA SE software version 14.

Result

A total of 23 articles out of 399 retrieved studies were added to this review study. The overall score of caregiver burden in individuals with SCI was calculated 48.68 (95% CI 42.574–54.788). The I2 heterogeneity was 11.7%, suggesting a low level of heterogeneity among the included studies. There was no systematic difference between various questionnaires added to meta-analysis (P = 0.526). In addition, the caregiver burden did not differ in less and highly developed countries (P = 0.405).

Conclusion

Since SCI places a considerable burden on caregivers, scoring the burden of care can help policymakers plan for essential interventions and allocate more facilities for these patients and their caregivers.

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Availability of data and materials

Data will be available for each researcher who request by Email.

Code availability

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Abbreviations

WoS:

Web of sciences

TSCI:

Traumatic spinal cord injury

SCI:

Spinal cord injury

CBI:

Caregiver burden inventory

CBS:

Caregiver Burden Scale

CG:

Caregiver

CSI:

Caregiver strain index

Q-SSPL:

Quality of surveys in psychological studies

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Acknowledgements

Authors thanks to other contributors of the systematic review who did not add as an author. This study was confirmed ethically in deputy of research, Guilan University of Medical Sciences.

Funding

The study was supported by Guilan Road Trauma Research Center, Guilan University of Medical Sciences.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guilan Road Trauma Research Center, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran

    Fateme Keihanian

  2. Department of Health in Emergencies and Disasters, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Leila Kouchakinejad-Eramsadati

  3. Department of Neurosurgery, Guilan Road Trauma Research Center, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran

    Shahrokh Yousefzadeh-Chabok

  4. Health Economics, Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran

    Enayatollah Homaie Rad

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  1. Fateme Keihanian
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Contributions

EHR proposed the systematic review, analyzed the results, wrote the manuscript and screened the articles, FK screened the articles, revised the manuscript, wrote discussion, SY screened the article, LK screened the article, wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Enayatollah Homaie Rad.

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Authors do not have any conflict of interests.

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This study was approved ethically in Guilan University of Medical Sciences ethics committee (Ethics code IR.GUMS.REC.1399.570).

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The authors has the consent to publish the results.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

An Example of search strategy (Web of Science).

((TI = (burden*) OR AB = (burden*) OR TI = (pressur*) OR AB = (pressur*) OR TI = (burden*) OR AB = (burden*)) AND (TI = (caregiver*) OR AB = (caregiver*))) AND LANGUAGE: (English) AND DOCUMENT TYPES: (Article) AND ((AB = "spinal cord injur*") OR TI = ("spinal cord injur*") OR (AB = "spinal cord lesion*") OR TI = ("Injur* of spine") OR (AB = "Injur* of spine") OR TI = ("spinal column injur*") OR (AB = "spinal column injur*") OR TI = ("vertebral column injur*") OR (AB = "vertebral column injur*")) AND LANGUAGE: (English) AND DOCUMENT TYPES: (Article).

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Keihanian, F., Kouchakinejad-Eramsadati, L., Yousefzadeh-Chabok, S. et al. Burden in caregivers of spinal cord injury patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Acta Neurol Belg 122, 587–596 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13760-022-01888-2

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