Psychological Problems of Patients Who Survived Cardiac Arrest Out of Hospital

Out-of-hospital circulatory arrest is a major challenge of current medicine. Circulatory arrest survivors bear increased risk of developing anxiety disorders and depressions both during hospitalization and after discharging to the home care. Circulatory arrest survivors are not provided routinely with psychological care. Patients included in our pilot research were identified in the register of surviving circulatory arrest. The survey was carried out using a non-standardized questionnaire. A total of 28 patients surviving the circulatory arrest were included in the pilot research. The average age of respondents was 54 years. There were 20 men and 8 women. The project showed that 18 (64.3 %) people, since they went through the critical status, have suffered from negative and bothering symptoms, such as: fear of a repeated cardiac arrest, sleeping disorders, persistent tiredness etc. Despite the fact that our group of patients was relatively small and larger studies addressing the issue are needed, our finding is alarming - the patients after the cardiac arrest suffer from many anxious and depressive symptoms as well as from cognitive deficit. In the situation when the common psychological intervention by a specialist is not provided, it seems that an early psychological invention is highly desirable and may have a beneficial effect on return of the patients to their everyday life.