Endocrine and psychologic responses of patients to cardiac pacemaker implantation

The findings that all HPA and SAM indexes increased during the first postoperative days strongly suggest that transvenous, permanent cardiac pacemaker implantation is a stressor. Since the psychologic tests did not demonstrate marked changes in anxiety or affective mood states, and the former was only weakly related to the endocrine responses, psychologic stimuli cannot be ascribed a prominent role in causing the observed endocrine alterations. Thus, the data suggest that physiologic stressors, such as surgical trauma and the irritation of the tissue surrounding the pacemaker, were the primary stimuli that activated the HPA and SAM systems. Although the structured teaching program resulted in a marked improvement of the treatment groups's knowledge of the device and the follow-up care it requires, it did not affect the endocrine or psychologic responses of patients to cardiac pacemaker implantation.