Quality Of Life Of Caregivers Of Patients With Esophageal Cancer And The Related Influencing Factors

Objective: To explore quality of life (QOL) of esophageal cancer patients'caregivers, and analyze the predictive factors, finally provide a theoretical basis and make recommendations for clinical care.Methods: First selected patients with esophageal cancer in the fourth hospital of Hebei province range from June to November in 2008, next determined patients in the study according to the single-and double-bed, and then identified each patient's caregiver. Finally introduced the purpose of the study to caregivers and obtained their consent, then let them answer the SF-36 questionnaires.Results: 410 questionnaires were issued, 371 valid, the response rate is 90.49 percent.The study covered 371 caregivers, 163 of them were men, and 208 were women. And the youngest caregiver was 19 years old, while the eldest was 66 years old, and the average age was 42.72 years old. 60.1% of them were children of patients.The score of PF, RP, BP, GH, VT, SF, RE and MH is respectively 94.3±10.4, 32.1±43.8, 63.8±15.4, 63.3±13.0, 60.2±13.7, 72.0±16.2, 11.4±28.7, 54.9±16.2. Scores of the 35-44 age group was highest among five groups, following the 45-54 age group and the 55-plus age group. Male and female caregivers have a significant difference, and scores of male were higher than those of female.Factors influencing cancer patients'caregivers include:①caregiver-related factors: caregivers'demographic situations, caregivers'physical health, relationship with patients, caregivers'perception and caregivers'social support.②caregiving-related factors: the length of time of caregiving, tasks of caregiving and caregiving burden.③patient-related or disease-related factors: patients'physical health, methods of treatment and means of payment.Multivariate analyses revealed no significant differences between the predictors of Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Mental Component Summary (MCS).The main predictors of PCS are perceived caregiving outcome, the difficulty of caregiving, gender, age and days in hospital; The main predictors of MCS are gender, outcome of caregiving, perceived patients'emotion, relationship with cancer patients, type of caregiving. And the difficulty of caregiving, gender, outcome of caregiving, relationship with cancer and source of payment are associated with the total scores of QOL.Conclusion: Caregivers of patients with esophageal cancer have a good physical health; while to a certain extent mental is affected.Statistical analyses reveal that factors influencing caregivers are: caregiver-related factors, caregiving-related factors and patient-related or illness-related facrors.Multivariate analyses show that difficulty of caregiving, outcome of caregiving, gender, relationship with cancer and patients'emotion affect caregivers'QOL.We can explore the influencing factors so that effective measures could be taken to improve the caregivers'QOL, strengthen their ability of caregiving, then improve QOL of cancer patients, and finally improve cancer patients'QOL.