Assessment of life quality and fatigue in candidates for cardiac transplantation

In this work, it is aimed to assess the quality of life and fatigue in candidates for cardiac transplantation. 97 patients suitable for the research criteria, which are followed up in cardiology services and cardiac transplantation polyclinic at Siyami Ersek Cardiology, Thorax Diseases, Cardiovascular Surgery Training and Research Hospital are recruited into this research between October, 2012 and January 2013. After it is approved by the Consule of Ethics, Visual Similarity Scale for Fatigue and EORTC QLQ-30 questionare (Quality of Life Scale used by the European Organisation of Research and Treatment of Cancer) was used. The values obtained by the interviews performed with the patients face-to-face were used. The average age of the patients was 41.5±10.4, (n=80) of them were male, the heart failure rate depending on physical activity was 91.8%, according to heart failure classification of New York Heart Association, NYHA II of the patients for (n=89) was 62.9%, the reason why they are candidates for cardiac transplant for (n=61) of the patients was cardiomyopathy. Subdimension of fatigue for the patients participated in our research was 48.5±25.1, mean energy subdimension was 31.1±10.5, mean general quality of life score was 57.9±23.5. According to the search results, it is observed that as the fatigue symptoms get worse the quality of life decreases. (p=0.05) In conclusion it is found out that the fatigue symptoms of the candidate have a meaningful correlation with the level of the energy, besides the pain, nausea and vomiting, malaise, dyspnea, loss of appetite, decrease in physical, emotional, cognitive and social functions and the general function have strong correlations with each other and they all affect the general quality of life. Key words: Cardiac Transplantation, Fatigue, The Quality of Life