Associations and Differences in Behavioral and Emotional Symptoms Among Parents, Teachers, and School-Aged Youth: The School Experience After Pediatric Heart Transplantation (HT)

Abstract

collected from the medical record and self-administered questionnaires. Depressive symptoms were assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ) (range, 0-27). SOC was assessed by the 13-item SOC scale by Antonovsky et al (range, 13-91). To assess an association of depression with SOC after adjustment for age, logistic regression analysis was performed with the presence of mild or more severe depression (defined as the PHQ score of more than 5) as dependent variable. Results: At 3 months after LVAD implantation, depressive symptoms were significantly improved (PHQ score, 6.7±5.6 to 4.9±4.8, p= 0.02), but still 27% (n= 9) had mild (10 > PHQ score ≥ 5) and 18% (n= 6) had moderate or severe depression (PHQ score ≥ 10). Preoperative SOC (54.8±7.7) did not influence on postoperative depressive symptoms (n= 24, r=-0.06, p= 0.77), whereas postoperative higher SOC (53.8±7.3) was significantly related to less depressive symptoms (n= 33, ρ =-0.53, p< 0.01). Logistic regression analysis showed that postoperative higher SOC was associated with a decrease risk of depression independent of age (odds ratio= 0.87, 95% confidence inter-val= 0.77-0.98, p= 0.02). Conclusion: Although depressive symptoms are lower at 3 months after LVAD implantation, depression is still a common mental problem reported by 45% of the patients. Postoperative lower SOC is an important factors to identify patients at high risk for depression.