Non-motor Symptoms among Patients with Parkinson's Disease attending Multidisciplinary clinic in a Tertiary care hospital and its Association with Family Caregiver Burden

Abstract

Background: Several citations were explored to find the association between non-motor symptoms among Parkinson's patients and caregiver burden among their caregivers. Different studies showed various outcomes and relationships between the two variables. This study was conducted to understand the relation between caregiver burden and non-motor symptoms among patients and their caregivers attending a multidisciplinary clinic in a tertiary care hospital. Failure to recognize and manage caregiver burden could potentially lead to burnout and premature institutionalization of the patient.

Methods: Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional health research ethical committee. The outcome measures used to assess non-motor symptoms and caregiver burden were Non-motor Symptoms Questionnaire (NMSQ) and the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) respectively which are standardized tools. Data was collected to assess the same after informed consent from Parkinson's patients and their caregivers attending the multidisciplinary clinic at our hospital. Data analysis and scoring were done using the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.

Result: There is a strong positive association between non-motor symptoms and caregiver burden in the urinary and memory domains and a moderate positive association between Gastro and anxiety domains that are statistically significant. A weak positive correlation  that was not statistically significant was found in the domains of hallucination, miscellaneous, cardiovascular with caregiver burden.  A very weak positive association  was observed between sexual drive and sleep domains with caregiver burden, however they were not statistically significant while a negative correlation  was seen between pain and caregiver burden.

Conclusion: There is positive association observed from the total score of non-motor symptoms and caregiver burden, that is statistically significant.