The effects of acute and elective cardiac surgery on the anxiety traits of patients with Marfan syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Marfan syndrome is a genetic disease, presenting with dysfunction of connective tissues leading to lesions in the cardiovascular and skeletal muscle system. Within these symptoms, the most typical is weakness of the connective tissue in the aorta, manifesting as aortic dilatation (aneurysm). This could, in turn, become annuloaortic ectasia, or life-threatening dissection. As a result, life-saving and preventative cardiac surgical interventions are frequent among Marfan syndrome patients. Aortic aneurysm could turn into annuloaortic ectasia or life-threatening dissection, thus life-saving and preventive cardiac surgical interventions are frequent among patients with Marfan syndrome. We hypothesized that patients with Marfan syndrome have different level of anxiety, depression and satisfaction with life compared to that of the non-clinical patient population. METHODS: Patients diagnosed with Marfan syndrome were divided into 3 groups: those scheduled for prophylactic surgery, those needing acute surgery, and those without need for surgery (n = 9, 19, 17, respectively). To examine the psychological features of the patients, Spielberger's anxiety (STAI) test, Beck's Depression questionnaire (BDI), the Berne Questionnaire of Subjective Well-being, and the Satisfaction with Life scale were applied. RESULTS: A significant difference was found in trait anxiety between healthy individuals and patients with Marfan syndrome after acute life-saving surgery (p < 0.01). The mean score of Marfan syndrome patients was 48.56 (standard deviation (SD): 5.8) as compared to the STAI population mean score of 43.72 (SD: 8.53). No difference was found between groups on the BDI (p > 0.1). Finally, a significant, medium size effect was found between patient groups on the Joy in Living scale (F (2.39) = 3.51, p = 0.040, η2 = 0.15). CONCLUSIONS: Involving psychiatric and mental-health care, in addition to existing surgical treatment interventions, is essential for more successful recovery of patients with Marfan syndrome.

Multiple disruption of the body representation in neglect.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Neglect related to the body has many symptoms. We suggest that the various symptoms might be associated with the injuries of different cognitive functions referring to the body, which are caused by lesions of different brain areas. Therefore we investigated the injuries of two functions in a group of patients with neglect (N=10) contrary to patients without neglect (N=10) and healthy controls (N=10). These functions are: perception of body location in external space and the perception of body shape. METHODS: We applied a novel method (Body Portraying Method), which is suitable for measuring subjective perception of both body location and body shape. RESULTS: 1. Patients with left neglect perceived their bodies with a significant right shift compared to their real body position. In contrast to this, patients without neglect and healthy controls tended to shift the subjective location of their body to the left. 2. Patients with neglect perceived the shape of their bodies significantly more distorted than both patients without neglect and healthy controls. 3. In case of eight patients with neglect, the symptom of shifted body location to the right and the symptom of body shape distortion appeared together. However, injuries of these two functions dissociated in case of two neglect patients. CONCLUSIONS: Both the perception of body location in external space and the perception of body shape might become distorted in neglect. Furthermore, the dissociation of these symptoms supports our suggestion, that they might be associated with the injuries of different functions referring to the body. This result has practical issues as well. At the end of the study we discuss the necessity of appropriate tailored physiotherapy (fitted to the injured function) in the rehabilitation of patients with neglect.