[Quality of life after an episode of myocardial infarct]

Abstract

We studied the quality of life of two groups of myocardial infarction patients (AMI) and a control group of normal subjects: 1) 100 post-AMI patients following a cardiac rehabilitation programme of 12 weeks (CRG); 2) 33 post-AMI patients following a conventional care by cardiologists (CCG); 3) 40 healthy subjects as control (CG). To determine the loss of quality of life we administered the questionnaire of De Velasco-Del Barrio. The use of the questionnaire was possible by authors permission. MI patients had significantly poorer quality of life than the healthy subjects (p < 0.0001). Cardiac rehabilitation improved quality of life (p < 0.001) more than the conventional care. Women reported poorer quality of life that men. Before and after rehabilitation programme the quality of life of the subjects age 50 years or more was worse than their younger counterparts. Invasive therapies such percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty and coronary artery bypass grafting are associated with an improvement of post-operative quality of life. In order to study the influence of social class on quality of life we divided our subjects into three groupings: high, medium and low according to code representing jobs and professional: a significant difference was found between high and low social class (p < 0.03). These findings suggest that cardiac rehabilitation may have positive effects on the quality of life in the MI patients. Aged patients, women, and with low social position reported poorer quality of life that younger, men and high social position patients. It seems that these patients should be assessed with psycho-social and treated with psychological and social support for improvement their quality of life.