Illness Representation of Patients With Systolic Heart Failure

Abstract

Studies have shown that individuals influence their health outcomes, both positively and negatively, through their illness representation. To date, no studies describe the illness representation of persons with systolic heart failure, a significant contributor of morbidity and mortality in older adults. The purpose of this study was to describe illness representation in heart failure. Twenty-two subjects with New York Heart Association class II or III systolic heart failure were recruited at a university-based heart failure clinic. Illness representation was measured using the revised Illness Perception Questionnaire. The means on each of the 9 subscales were found to be significantly different from the neutral point of 3. The results suggest that participants believed that their heart failure was a chronic, cyclic disease with serious consequences that they could control through treatment. In addition, participants believed that they understood their heart failure and did not have a negative affective response to their heart failure.

Illness perceptions of Chinese women with breast cancer and relationships with socio‐demographic and clinical characteristics

“…The mean scores for the other 7 dimensions are presented in Table . As recommended by Cherrington, Lawson, and Clark (), a single‐sample t test was used to examine whether the mean scores for each subscale were different from the neutral point of 3. Table shows that the mean scores for the timeline acute/chronic, timeline cyclical, and illness coherence subscales were significantly lower than 3 ( P < .001), while the mean scores for the other 4 subscales were significantly greater than 3 ( P < .001).…”

“…According to the criteria (a neutral point of 3) suggested by Cherrington et al () and unlike previous studies (McCorry et al, ; Shabahang et al, ), we explored other negative aspects of participants' perceptions of this illness: believing that the illness would result in serious consequences, perceiving themselves to have inadequate knowledge of breast cancer, and suffering emotional distress. Participants' perceptions of consequences were found to significantly correlate with avoidance/denial (Hopman & Rijken, ; Richardson et al, ) and poor quality of life (Ashley, Marti, Jones, Velikova, & Wright, ), while psychological distress has been linked to decreased quality of life and compliance with medical therapies (Vetter et al, ).…”

Illness Beliefs in Patients with Recurrent Symptomatic Atrial Fibrillation

“… a IPQ‐R subscale score divided by number of subscale items for comparison with scores reported by Cherrington et al 24 and Volmeck 25 …”

“…Subjects awaiting elective coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery 22 and those treated with elective percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) 23 viewed their illness as less chronic compared to subjects with HF 24,25 and subjects attending cardiac rehabilitation 26 . Subjects who completed a cardiac rehabilitation program after myocardial infarctions (MI) 26 reported lower personal control beliefs compared to subjects with HF 24 or those treated with PCI 23 . Treatment control beliefs were highest in subjects undergoing elective PCI 23 and awaiting CABG surgery 22 .…”

“…Treatment control beliefs were highest in subjects undergoing elective PCI 23 and awaiting CABG surgery 22 . HF subjects perceived greater consequences 24,25 of their illness compared to patients with CAD 14,22,23,27 and endorsed more emotional distress 25 related to their illness compared to patients awaiting CABG surgery 22 …”