Denial in Heart Transplant Candidates

Abstract

The concept of denial is important for the psychosomatic understanding of cardiovascular disease and treatment. This study evaluated denial using several psychometric assessment scales in patients referred for psychiatric evaluations prior to heart transplantation. Surviving patients who had a mean survival of more than 38 months had less denial than nonsurviving patients who had a mean survival of 4 months. These findings are very preliminary, but interesting, and would encourage further investigation of denial in these patients. Denial is a complex psychological variable, only part of which may be applicable to surgery patients.

Psychosocial and behavioural factors in heart transplant candidates – an overview

“…disposition to experience negative affect) [84]. In addition, HTX patients with a mean survival of only 4 months after transplantation had reported more denial in the pretransplant evaluation than patients who were still alive after an average of 38 months [85].…”

Psychological Problems of Kidney Transplantation: Satisfaction with Dialysis Therapy and Desire for Transplantation in Hemodialysis Patients

“…Under a severely stressful condition, such as dialysis therapy [16] and organ transplantation [17], 'denial' is an effective psychological mechanism for coping to prevent depression and allow satisfactory adaptation to maintenance dialysis treatment. Alexithymia is charac terized by difficulty in expressing one's feelings verbally and a lack of fantasy [7][8][9][10][11][12], Many studies have shown that alexithymia results from a variety of psychological sources which are associated with defense mechanisms such as 'denial' [8,9,19].…”