Evaluation of Early and Late Stage Stress Burden Among Caregivers of Patients Undergoing Neurooncological and Neurovascular Surgery

Objective: Caregiving to neurosurgical patients is the demanding task load to caregiver some physical, psychological, social and economic issues.We focused on neurooncological and neurovascular patients and aimed to investigate stress burden of caregivers and to identify factors contributing to it for this group of patients.Methods: 20 subarachnoid hemorrhage, 20 malignant tumor and their caregivers were included.Patients' neurophysical condition were evaluated using Barthel index.Caregivers' physical, psychological burden was measured by "Caregiver Strain Index".Both of index were completed during preoperative period and at 3rd month postoperativel.The probable predictor factors for caregivers on stress burden of caregiver was investigated.Results: For oncological and vascular patient groups, preoperative Barthel index scores were 15.45 (4.04) and 12.6 (5.9) respectively.Barthel index scores showed improvement of their clinical condition in vascular group as a difference at 3th months.Caregiver Strain Index scores were similar in both caregiver groups preoperatively (5.3 and 5.1 respectively; p=0.87).However, when both groups are compared, Caregiver Strain Index scores at 3rd month postoperatively showed a significantly higher stress burden for caregivers of oncological patients (p=0.01). Conclusion:During hospital stay, both groups had similar dependency levels and their caregivers also showed similar stress burden.Reducing dependency level of oncological patients and clinical improvement of vascular patients resulted in a clear difference between the stress levels of caregivers.An organized education plan with a holistic approach may reduce caregiver's physical, psychological and social burden and improve patient's activities of daily living and surgical outcome.