Using Web-based interventions to support caregivers of patients with cancer: a systematic review.

Purpose/objectives: To explore the literature to examine the physical, social, psychological, financial, usability, and feasibility outcomes of Web-based interventions on caregivers of people with cancer and to identify potential trends in this body of evidence.

Data Sources: PubMed, CINAHL®, PsycINFO®, and Inspec.

Data Synthesis: Six articles met inclusion criteria.

Psychometric Properties of a Decisional Capacity Screening Tool for Individuals Contemplating Participation in Alzheimer's Disease Research.

Background: With the growing population of individuals affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related disorders, there is a pressing demand for research on late-life cognitive disorders. However, this population's high risk for decisional incapacity necessitates evaluation of capacity to consent to research participation, adding cost and complexity to the research process. The University of California, San Diego Brief Assessment of Capacity to Consent (UBACC) was initially validated in a sample of persons with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

Attribution of mild cognitive impairment etiology in patients and their care partners.

Objective: This study examined the attribution of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) etiology assigned by individuals with MCI and their care partners, and the extent to which the dyads agreed on the attribution of MCI etiology.

Methods: We conducted secondary analyses of cross-sectional data from a cohort of individuals with MCI (n = 60) and their care partners (n = 60). The mean age of the individuals with MCI was 71.

Temporal stability of receptiveness to clinical research on Alzheimer disease.

Research advance directives are a proposed mechanism for ensuring that decisions with regard to research participation adhere to preferences voiced by persons with Alzheimer disease (AD) before losing decisional capacity. Although this approach rests on the assumption that preferences with regard to research participation are consistent over time, little is known about the stability of such preferences. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the temporal stability of older adults' receptiveness to participation in clinical trials, neuroimaging studies, and psychosocial investigations on AD.

Informed consent to research in long-term care settings.

Informed consent to nursing home research is a two-tiered process that begins with obtaining the consent of a long-term care community at the institutional level and progresses to the engagement of individuals in the consent process. Drawing on a review of the literature and the authors' research experiences and institutional review board service, this article describes the practical implications of nurse investigators' obligation to ensure informed consent among participants in long-term care research. Recommendations focus on applying a community consent model to long-term care research, promoting an evidence-based approach to the protection of residents with decisional impairment, and increasing investigators' attention to ethical issues involving long-term care staff.

Spouses' cardiovascular reactivity to their partners' suffering.

A laboratory study of older adults with osteoarthritis and their spouses was conducted to examine the unique influence of exposure to suffering on caregivers' risk for impaired psychological and physical health. Spouses' blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) were monitored during 2 tasks designed to capture their partners' suffering. First, spouses watched their partners (and a stranger) carry heavy logs across an 8-ft space for 3 min, a task that elicited pain expression.

Conceptual challenges in the study of caregiver-care recipient relationships.

Background: In the literature on family caregiving, care receiving and caregiving are generally treated as distinct constructs, suggesting that informal care and support flow in a unidirectional manner from caregiver to care recipient. Yet, informal care dynamics are fundamentally relational and often reciprocal, and caregiving roles can be complex and overlapping.

Objectives: To illustrate ways care dynamics may depart from traditional notions of dyadic unidirectional family caregiving and to stimulate a discussion of the implications of complex relational care dynamics for caregiving science.

Frequency and correlates of advance planning among cognitively impaired older adults.

Objective: To examine the prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of written advance planning among patients with or at risk for dementia-imposed decisional incapacity.

Design: Retrospective, cross-sectional.

Setting: University-based memory disorders clinic.

Marital quality in the context of mild cognitive impairment.

Profound behavioral changes in persons with dementia often negatively affect the quality of marital relationships. Yet, little is known about the extent to which the marital relationship may be affected when the care recipient has milder degrees of cognitive impairment. This study characterizes marital quality among 27 adults who live with a spouse with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Making sense of mild cognitive impairment: a qualitative exploration of the patient's experience.

Purpose: The proposed dementia precursor state of mild cognitive impairment is emerging as a primary target of aging research. Yet, little is known about the subjective experience of living with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment. This study examines, from the patient's perspective, the experience of living with and making sense of the diagnosis.

Caregiver-specific outcomes in antidementia clinical drug trials: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objectives: To describe the range of caregiver-specific outcomes and approaches to their study within antidementia drug trials and to quantify the effect of cholinesterase inhibitors on burden and active time use of caregivers of persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Design: Systematic review of English-language publications and unpublished reports of antidementia clinical drug trials that included caregiver-specific outcomes. Study characteristics and methodological quality were summarized.

Cognitive and motor symptoms in dementia: focus on dementia with Lewy bodies.

Purpose: To describe the clinical syndrome called dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and highlight its common and unique characteristics with respect to diagnosis and management.

Data Sources: Review of the scientific literature including psychiatric literature, reports of clinical trials, and clinical practice guidelines.

Conclusions: DLB is a clinical and histopathologic disease, which is second only to Alzheimer's disease (AD) as a cause of dementia in older adults.