Association between patients with dementia and high caregiving burden for caregivers from a medical center in Taiwan

BACKGROUND: Based on a person-centered care, the relationships between people with dementia and caregivers should be interconnected. There is a need to study what attributes would contribute a higher caregiving burden from a comprehensive viewpoint of care recipients and caregivers. METHODS: Apriori algorithm is performed with 12 variables for antecedents and caregiving burden for the consequent from the self-built database of a medical center in Taiwan. The minimum support, minimum confidence, and lift of Apriori algorithm are set to 5%, 90%, and > 1, respectively. RESULTS: Thirty-two rules that satisfy the threshold values are found. Our findings show that clinical dementia rating of care recipients, type of dementia of care recipients, and age of caregivers are not the attributing variables to affect the caregiving burden. In contrast, the highest burden results from a female spouse or a sole caregiver. Moreover, the burden is associated with the type of primary care, frequency of care, and help of key activities.