Psychiatric Aspects of Organ Transplantation

Psychological Predictors of Mortality in Heart Transplanted Patients: A Prospective, 6-Year Follow-Up Study

“…The importance of a thorough assessment of depressive symptoms in cardiac recipients has been witnessed since the early reports on psychiatric complications after heart transplant (48). Depression is one of the most prevalent psychiatric side effects of immunosuppressant drugs (49), and its occurrence among heart transplanted patients ranges from 5% to 39% according to the DSM criteria (27,50). In our study, 14.7% of patients presented with clinical depression, a percentage fairly similar to that of 15.8% reported by Dew et al (13).…”

Psychiatric Aspects of Organ Transplantation in Critical Care

“…Families and caregivers may experience symptoms and distress as well as the dynamics in their relationship with the patient undergo changes during the transplant process and the focus shifts from one of caregiving to rehabilitation. [14, 22, 23, 24, 25]. …”

“…Conflicts over daily care, such as the timing of medications, meals, rehabilitation, and tests, can be related to a patient’s attempt to control rising fears related to worsening health and an uncertain wait for a donor organ [8]. In evaluating the patient it is important to rule out cardiac arrhythmias, angina, electrolyte imbalances, respiratory distress, seizures, CNS infections and other CNS pathology as contributing to or causing anxiety symptoms [14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26]. …”

Anxiety Associated with Kidney Transplantation

“…The remaining 16 subjects consisted of 10 living (6 males and 4 females) and 6 cadaver trans planted cases (5 males and 1 female). The average age of these 16 patients was 40.0 ± 9.4 years (28-63), and the mean HD interval before transplantation was 4.0 years (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). Table 1 records the anxiety associated with kidney transplantation, and psychiatric disturbances for the pre-and postoperation periods in the sample of 16 recipients.…”