‘We’re like a gang, we stick together’: experiences of ventricular assist device communities

Abstract

Background: VADs are relatively new developments in the management of advanced heart

Validity and reliability of the self‐care behaviour scale for patients with left ventricular assist device

“…Thus, data from 32 participants were analysed. Owing to the limited number of patients with LVAD in South Korea (Lee & Cho, 2021 ; Standing et al., 2018 ), a sample size of 200 or more, which was the sample size required for exploratory factor analysis (Noh, 2019 ), was not met. We then confirmed construct validity through correlation analysis.…”

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Although the number of patients with heart failure is steadily increasing worldwide, left ventricular assist device (LVAD) insertion is attracting attention as an alternative to heart failure treatment when heart transplantation proves insufficient (Al Danaf et al, 2018) and LVAD implantation has become a common approach for life sustain if heart transplant is not an option (Virani et al, 2021). Still, because LVAD implantation has been a highly technical operation since 2010, the U.S. and Europe have focused on its quantitative growth (Standing et al, 2018;Virani et al, 2021). In South Korea, approximately more than 100 LVAD surgeries have been performed since the launch of commercialized LVAD in 2012 and the introduction of health insurance for LVAD surgery in 2018 (Sivathasan et al, 2020).

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“…To measure patients' self-care behaviour, tools should assess device maintenance, daily healthcare management activities and fully reflect the related experiences from patients' and their families' perspectives (Standing et al, 2018;Streur et al, 2020). Nonetheless, current tools for patients with LVAD have been developed through studies conducted in the United States (Casida et al, 2015) and Japan (Kato et al, 2019), and Casida et al's (2015) scale mainly comprises items on device management and lacks contents regarding daily healthcare management.…”