The Factors associated with improving of quality of life in psychological rehabilitation and usual care groups of patients after cardiac surgery

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the factors to predict the improvement of quality of life (HRQOL) in intervention (IG) and control usual care (CG) groups patients after cardiac surgery (CS). Methods: The cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) impact was analyzed in IG (n=43) and in CG (n=46). HRQOL was measured using SF-36. A-Type behaviour by JAS-SF, D-Type personality by DS-14, alexithymia by TAS-20. Hostility by SCL-90R questionnaires. The assessment was performed at 2 and 12 months after CS. CBT consisted of 18 therapy sessions over 10 months. Fourteen sociodemographic and biomedical farctors were collected from the medical records or by interview. Results: After controlling for baseline imbalance (ANCOVA) findings have demonstrated improvement in IG according to physical functioning (F=5.226, p=0.025), general mental health (F=5.978, p=0.017), and mental component of SF-36 (F=6.050, p=0.016) domains. The analysis of sociodemographic biomedical and psychological relations with change scores of each SF-36 domain have shown that Type-A behaviour was related to the better changes in both groups according to the bodily pain scale (p<0.05), while according to the role limitations due to emotiobnal problems, mental component summary only in CG. [...]