Life After Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation In Patients With Cardiovascular Diseases

Title: Life After Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation In Patients With Cardiovascular Diseases Background: Evaluating the quality of life in patients surviving cardiac arrest after discharge from hospital. Methods and Findings:  The study included 105 patients survivors of a cardiac arrest admitted in Intensive Care Unit at Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases ,,Prof. Dr. George I.M. Georgescu”, Iasi. Over 5 years patients were interviewed by phone or medical reevaluation, after their verbal consent. We applied the Romanian version of the Short Form 36 questionnaire. Eight scales of SF-36 health survey were scored: physical functioning (PF), role of physical functioning (RP), body pain (BP), general health (GH), vitality (VT), social functioning (SF), role of emotional functioning (RE) and mental health (MH). The scales scores of PF, RP, RE, VT, MH, SF, BP and GH were as follows: 57.4; 22.2; 30.28; 50.67; 54.14; 76; 71; 48.5. Comparing the dates with the scores available in the literature for the general population we observed good general scores for the physical items while the emotional items are generally low; most of the patients limited their physical activity, mostly due to emotional perception about acute event. Conclusions: Post resuscitation, the survivors have an acceptable quality of life, justifying the medical and financial efforts.