Sobrecarga do cuidador informal da pessoa com Esclerose Lateral Amiotrófica

Resumo

Introdução: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is characterized by an idiopathic and fatal neurodegenerative disease, this disease affects the upper and lower motor neurons. The main symptoms are: asthenia, muscle atrophy, muscle spasms, cramps, fatigue, spasticity and sialorrhea. There are different forms of presentation of this disease, such as: medullary form, more frequent, involving muscles of the upper and lower limbs, causing difficulties in walking; axial form, when muscle weakness involves the neck or back muscle; diffuse form, when various complaints associated with different parts of the body.It evolves quickly and does not have an effective treatment to this date. The average life expectancy is between 3 - 5 years after the onset of the disease. Generally, the treatment offered to people with this disease is palliative care, which aims to minimize symptoms and maximize quality of life.

Objetivos: To systematize the knowledge about the factors associated with the overload of the informal caregiver of the person with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Material e Métodos: This is an integrative literature review, carried out from November 4, 2022 to January 27, 2023, in the BVS (Virtual Health

Library), Google Scholar and PubMed (National Library of Medicine of the United States), with the following descriptors: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; caregiver burden, and its English counterpart (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; caregiver burden), combined with the Boolean operator “AND”.

Resultados: Six articles were selected, and the one that is most evident refers to the overload of the informal caregiver of the person with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Conclusões: The selected articles revealed that despite the persistence and dedication of informal caregivers in the care of patients with ALS. It should be noted the lack of training, knowledge and various socio-demographic factors, which leads to an increase in their overload.