Objective:

To know current scientific production about dialysis patients’s caregiver burden.

Method:

A search was conducted in the databases of PubMed, Proquest, Scopus and Google Scholar. Scientific articles written in English and Spanish were included. Articles that dealt with burden of caregivers were analysed, excluding those articles that did not present results and those in which the patients were not subjected to dialysis.

Results:

We included 19 articles published between 2010 and 2018. Overload appears in most of the caregivers, to a greater or lesser degree. The majority of the caregivers are women between 40 and 70 years of age, daughters or wives and a majority with primary education or without education. The most influential variables in the appearance of overload of the dialysis patient’s caregiver are: greater dependence on the patient, greater survival of the patient in the dialysis treatment and having less social support. Daughters caregivers, single caregivers, young or older caregivers present greater overload.

Conclusions:

Most dialysis patient’s caregivers suffer burden, prevailing moderate and mild degrees of burden. The main caregiver’s profile is a middle-aged woman, who is related as daughter/son or wife/husband. The most influential variables leading to this caregivers’ burden to appear are: greater dependence and survival of the patient with dialysis and a lower social support. Dialysis treatment does not seem to affect in the burden of the dialysis patient’s caregiver.

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