PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of respite care. The analysis was conducted by reviewing published intervention studies on the effects of formal respite care for caregivers of dementia patients, patients with dementia, and the prevented or delayed rate of institutionalization of the patients. METHOD: Two computerized databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL) were searched to find respite care-related articles published from the year of 1981 to 2000. A total of 49 published articles were identified. Of them, nine studies, which met for the inclusion criteria of this study, were included. RESULTS: Results revealed that there was little evidence of the effect of respite care on, not only caregivers' burden, stress, depression and well-being, but also the rate of institutionalization of the patients. It was noteworthy that dementia patients reported fewer problems in behavior, although cognitive functioning and activity of daily living abilities continued to decline. However, these findings should be carefully interpreted because of methodological problems, such as non-random sampling, non random group assignment, a small sample size, uncontrolled confounding variables, limited period of services, and no specific types of services. CONCLUSION: It is recommended to conduct intervention studies of respite care being conducted in Korea with the corrections of methodological problems suggested from this study.