Religiosity associated with prolonged survival in liver transplant recipients

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that religiosity (ie, seeking God's help, having faith in God, trusting in God, and trying to perceive God's will in the disease) is associated with improved survival in patients with end-stage liver disease who have undergone orthotopic liver transplantation. We studied a group of 179 candidates for liver transplantation who responded to a questionnaire on religiosity during the pretransplant psychological evaluation and underwent transplantation between 2004 and 2007. The demographic data, educational level, employment status, clinical data, and results of the questionnaire were compared with the survival of patients during follow-up, regardless of the cause of any deaths. Factorial analysis of responses to the questionnaire revealed 3 main factors: searching for God (active), waiting for God (passive), and fatalism. 2 ¼ 8.506, P ¼ 0.035) were independently associated with survival, even after adjustments for the waiting for God factor, fatalism, age, sex, marital status, employment, educational level, viral etiology, Child-Pugh score, serum creatinine level, time from the questionnaire to transplantation, donor age, and intraoperative bleeding. Patients who did not present the searching for God factor were younger than those who did, but they had shorter survival times (P ¼ 0.037) and a 3-fold increased relative risk of dying (HR ¼ 3.01, 95% CI ¼ 1. 07-8.45). In conclusion, religiosity is associated with prolonged survival in patients undergoing liver transplantation.

Influência da espiritualidade sobre a função renal em pacientes transplantados renais

“…(28) For this reason, among confounding factors approached in this study, adherence has special importance when the study period considered includes the initial period after transplantation; during this period non-adherence poses a higher risk. (29) Adherence scale did not differ between groups. In addition, no correlation between intrinsic relation and adherence scores was seen, although scores on both scales were inversely correlated with renal function at 12 months.…”

Attendance at Religious Services, Prayer, Religious Coping, and Religious/Spiritual Identity as Predictors of All-Cause Mortality in the Black Women's Health Study

“…Our analyses here also pertained only to a relatively healthy general cohort. The majority of previous research on longitudinal associations between religious coping and mortality has been carried out with clinical populations (12)(13)(14)(15), and thus less is known about the dynamics of this association in nonill populations. In clinical populations it is possible that associations between religious coping and mortality might persist even after control for service attendance, but this would require further research.…”

“…In a large sample of 92,395 women aged 50-79 years from the Women's Health Initiative, positive religious coping was not associated with all-cause mortality (9). Some smaller studies likewise found little association between other measures of religious participation and mortality (12,13), but the literature is somewhat mixed, and some small studies show that religious coping is associated with lower mortality among clinical populations (14,15). It is possible that lack of definitive results in the literature on the associations between other measures of R/S and all-cause mortality are due to a lack of large prospective cohort studies with which to examine these associations, with a few exceptions noted above.…”

Coping religioso-espiritual e consumo de alcoólicos em hepatopatas do sexo masculino

“…The positive results of Spiritual religious coping have already been described in relation to pain, physical weakness, heart diseases, infectious diseases and cancer (3) , as well as in relation to hepatitis C (4) and liver transplant patients (5) .…”