Social Support And Quality Of Life In Women With Congestive Heart Failure

Download or read book Social Support and Quality of Life in Women with Congestive Heart Failure written by Kristin K. Kuntz and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) is a debilitating condition resulting from a structural or functional cardiac disorder that impedes the heart from filling with or ejecting a sufficient amount of blood to meet the needs of the body. Research has demonstrated a relationship between low perceived social support and poor physical and emotional outcomes in women with CHF. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a social support intervention among women with heart failure. It was hypothesized that women with CHF who participated in a support group would report enhanced quality of life (QOL) compared to usual care patients. Secondary hypotheses were that support group participants would report an increase in the size of their social support network and a reduction in symptoms of distress. Thirty-four women with CHF completed the baseline assessment and were randomized into the support group condition (N=15) or the usual care condition (N=19). The support group met once each week for eight weeks. During the sessions, patients discussed topics related to living with CHF, including coping with physical and emotional symptoms of heart failure, barriers to following a treatment regimen, and stress management. At the end of eight weeks, participants completed the psychosocial questionnaires again. The study was designed with an eight-week follow-up. Thus, 16 weeks after baseline assessment, participants completed all psychosocial questionnaires a third time. Usual care subjects did not receive any intervention during the 16-week study but were given a referral to a local support group at the conclusion of the study. A series of repeated measures ANOVAs revealed no significant time by condition interactions in heart failure-related QOL, general health-related QOL, or the number of people in support networks across time periods. Given the small number of participants in the current study, it is difficult to draw conclusions about whether this intervention could be beneficial to larger numbers of CHF patients. This was the first study of its kind to quantitatively examine potential changes in social support and QOL after participation in a discussion-based support group. Future research will need to recruit larger samples and explore alternative support group formats.