Abstract: Objective: To systematically summarize the care burden of family caregivers of patients with colorectal cancer and its associated factors. Methods: Referring to the Cochrane Collaborative Network Work Manual, we searched the literatures published from the establishment of the database to March 31, 2019 including PubMed, EMbase, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, Springer, Web of Science, CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, CBM, and Baidu Scholar. The literature we were interested in were those studies focusing on care burden of family caregivers of patients with colorectal cancer. Two researchers independently screened and extracted the data. The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) was used to assess the paper quality. After the quality assessment, we systematically summarize the related studies on the topic. Results: Ten studies were finally included. According to caregiver adaptation model and cancer family care model, the associated factors could be grouped into patient characteristics and caregiver characteristics. The main associated factors included the patients' general information, disease condition, and quality of life, self care ability, intestinal function and caregivers' general information, social support, coping style, and quality of life. Conclusion: Many factors are associated with the burden of care of family caregivers in patients with colorectal cancer. The recruited studies are descriptive researches and such a research design cannot provide robust evidence of causality. More longitudinal studies are expected to provide high-quality evidence.

Key words: patients with colorectal cancer; caregivers; care burden; associated factors; systematic review