[Quality of life of family caregivers of adults with spinal cord injury: a systematic review].

The scope of this study was to analyze the quality of life of family caregivers of adults with spinal cord injury. Two researchers conducted a systematic review independently, based on articles published between 2000 to 2014, using the key words quality of life and caregivers or family and spinal cord, in Portuguese, English and Spanish. The search was conducted in the Virtual Health Library (BVS) and the United States National Library of Medicine (PubMED) databases. Caregivers of tetraplegics have a worse quality of life than caregivers of paraplegics. Changes in the quality of life for the caregivers were not significant over time. Different results were observed when comparing caregivers of adults with spinal cord injury and healthy subjects. Factors that negatively influence the quality of life of caregivers were the presence of chronic disease; greater care time, age and number of children; and lower schooling level of caregivers. There is a need for public health policy development and preparation of more comprehensive intervention strategies that include not only the patient but also the caregiver.