Psychological status of patients with nephrotic syndrome undergoing percutaneous renal biopsy

Nephrotic syndrome (NS) is a common clinical disease with four main clinical manifestations: hypoalbuminemia (<30 g/L), macro-proteinuria (>3.5 g/24 h), edema, and hyperlipidemia. There is a variety of pathological types that are associated with NS. Percutaneous renal biopsy (PRB) plays an important role in clinical practice in that it can be used to establish a histological diagnosis, to provide information for an ultimate NS diagnosis, and subsequent prognosis. Our aim was to observe the psychological status of patients with NS before and after PRB and investigate the factors affecting their psychological status.

Two hundred and thirty-five patients with NS were enrolled in the present study. We evaluated the psychological status of patients 24 hours before and 6 hours after PRB by using the Symptom Check List-90 and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.

We analyzed the factors affecting the psychological status of the study participants before and after this important NS procedure. Before the PRB procedure was administered, the factorial anxiety and phobic anxiety scores were higher than normal (p < 0.0.5). After PRB, only anxiety was determined to be higher than normal in the somatization score (p < 0.05). In general, there were higher scores among males rather than the female study participants (p < 0.05). Scores of all indices decreased significantly in all patients after PRB (p < 0.05).

Psychological status was common in patients who underwent PRB and were affected by many factors.