Regular Research ArticleImpact of Caregiver Burden on Adverse Health Outcomes in Community-Dwelling Dependent Older Care Recipients
Section snippets
Study Setting and Cohort Participants
In this study, we employed baseline data on the care recipient and caregiver pairs in the Nagoya Longitudinal Study for Frail Elderly (NLS-FE) and data on the mortality and hospitalization of the care recipients during the 3-year follow-up period. Japan introduced a universal-coverage long-term care insurance (LTCI) program in 2000. Under the LTCI program, each applicant's care levels are determined according to eligibility criteria. Eligibility status is classified into six levels (“needs
RESULTS
The baseline distribution of the sociodemographic characteristics of the care recipients and caregivers according to the quartiles of the ZBI score is shown in Table 1. We used analysis of variance or Pearson χ2 test to evaluate differences among the quartiles of the ZBI score. The bADL score decreased, and the number of community-based services used, the Charlson comorbidity index, and recipient GDS-15 score increased as the level of the ZBI quartile increased. The care recipients whose
DISCUSSION
In the present study, we observed that the recipients with caregivers with a baseline ZBI score in the highest quartile were 1.54 and 1.51 times more likely to show increased risk of all-cause mortality and hospitalization during a 3-year follow-up period, respectively, in comparison with those with caregivers in the lowest. These relationships existed independently of various other risk factors for mortality and hospitalization, including gender, age, number of community-based services used,
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The authors thank all the patients, caregivers, and the many nurses participating in the study, and the Nagoya City Health Care Service Foundation for Older People for their vigorous cooperation.
This study was supported by a Grant-in Aid for the Com- prehensive Research on Aging and Health from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare of Japan and a grant from Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Welfare Foundation.