Perioperative anxiety and depression in open-heart surgery

Eighty patients completed state-anxiety and depression inventories on the day before, 7 days after, and 6 months after open-heart surgery. The patients with high, moderate, or low anticipatory anxiety still had relatively high, moderate, and low anxiety, respectively, in the postoperative period, supporting the linear relationship between preoperative and postoperative arousal. Omitting the items on somatic-vegetative complaints from the global depression score reveals that cardiac surgical patients do not experience significant postoperative changes in depression related to cognitive-affective symptoms. The preoperative assessment of emotional arousal significantly predicts the level of emotional distress after surgery.