A Cochrane review [Abstract] 1 included 4 studies with a total of 753 subjects. The studies applied different forms of respite care in each study: 60 hours of respite care over a two-week period (max 6 hours/day), 3 optional types of respite care, i.e. in-home respite, day-care or institutional respite, a weekly visit by a trained volunteer providing assistance and companionship for an average of 2.5 hours for 6 weeks and a trained companion to stay at home with the care recipient for 8 sessions, lasting for 3 hours. Pooling of data was not possible, as the studies were different in many ways including the interventions and outcomes. One study did not report data that could be used in the analysis. None of the 3 studies that compared respite care with no respite care reported on the rate of institutionalisation, which was the primary outcome of this review. Re-analysis of outcomes using data from the published studies found no significant effects of respite care compared to no respite care on any caregiver variable. When respite care was compared to polarity therapy (a type of touch therapy that uses gentle pressure on energy points and biofields to help the client achieve physiological relaxation), a significant effect was found in favour of polarity therapy for caregiver perceived stress (MD 5.80, 95% CI 1.43 to 10.17; 1 study, n=38), but not for other measures of psychological health and other caregiver outcomes. No studies reported evaluable data on outcomes related to the people with dementia.
Comment: The quality of evidence is downgraded by limitations in study quality (unclear allocation concealment), by inconsistency (heterogeneity in interventions and outcomes), by indirectness (short follow-up time, no data reported on primary outcome, no data on patients with dementia) and by imprecise results (limited study size for each comparison).
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