Coping strategies in patients awaiting lung transplantation

Introduction: Living with severe lung disease is a stressful situation. Constraint coping strategies may constitute an additional burden. We aimed to describe coping strategies in patients awaiting lung transplantation Material and method: A national cohort of 121 consecutive patients was screened by psychometric questionnaires as part of the work-up for lung transplantation during the period 2006-2010. 86 of the patients scored the Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WCQ) (Lazarus and Folkman 1988).WCQ measures 8 different Coping Scales each reflecting emotionally-focused or problem-focused strategies. The patients comprised 72 (34 females) with COPD and 14 (6 females) with pulmonary fibrosis. Mean (SD) age was respectively 56 (4.9) and 53 (5.3) years. Patients with cystic fibrosis were excluded. Data were analyzed according to the Manual developed for WCQ distributed by Mind Garden, Inc (Folkman and Lazarus 1988) (1). High score indicates use of coping strategy. Reference values are empirically constructed (1). Conclusion: The patients had higher scores in emotionally-focused coping strategies than healthy references. This may be of clinical importance when it comes to understanding how patients deal with postoperative challenges.