Results
Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of all 192 patients
and their 192 family caregivers. The majority of the
patients were elderly, married, unemployed men, and with
less than a junior high school education. The majority of
the family caregivers were younger, employed women,
with an education level above senior high school, and low
social economic status, who had been caring for the patient for a mean of 6.0 years, 6.1 days per week, and 13.7 hours per day. Slightly more than half of the family caregivers were the spouses of the patients. Half of the family caregivers were the sole patient caregivers on a daily basis and half had other help. Most caregivers did not report having a chronic illness themselves. Missing data included one patient without report of COPD severity, one patient without report of other chronic diseases, and 33 patients without indication of specified duration _ 5 years; these patients’ data were excluded from analysis of variables without correction made for missing data.