["You need a new heart". The problem of diagnostic disclosure from the viewpoint of the affected cardiologic patient].

: Heart transplantation has become a reasonable therapeutic option in treatment of patients with terminal heart diseases. Though it offers increased quantity as well as improved quality of life, information about needing a donor heart is a turning point in the patient's life. The aim of the study was to evaluate through postoperative interviews how that information was given by the doctors and how the patients had coped with it. It could be shown that 19 of the 49 interviewed patients took the information about needing a new heart as an expected event and chance, while for the remaining 30 it absolutely meant an unexpected information and a shock. Furthermore, only 3 persons reported about having had a helpful and empathic talk to their doctors. 26 about nothing but a short, cool information, and 10 held the shock about the way of information given by the doctors responsible for their bad preoperative psychical condition. Statements of patients are given to elucidate the results, which were discussed from the point of psychosomatics as well as from the communication sciences. At last, summarizing, rules for a helpful pretransplant-information to the patients were given.