ABSTRACT
Purpose: This review related to the level of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD) for patients after cardiac surgery, and associated risk factors. Also the HRQOL, PTSD measures and the related factor. Methods: The search strategy was guided by the review aims. The following databases were searched to retrieve related literature: the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) via EBSCO, MEDLINE via PubMed, Ovid, Science Direct, Google Scholar, in addition to the Jordanian Database for Nursing Research. Studies presented in English for the period between 2012 and 2019 were included. Literature was reviewed by using the following strategy: The key word “post-operative HRQOL”, “post-operative PTSD”, “prevalence”, “incidence”, “risk factors”, and “cardiac surgery”, with using of Boolean operators “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT” to conduct the search in databases, Then the titles and abstracts were reviewed for their relevancy and irrelevant and duplicated studies were discarded. EBSCO resulted in 180 articles, Ovid 5 articles, and SCIENCE DIRECT 200 articles, articles with the same ideas were sorted, and full text was included in the review. The overall number after sorting was 25 articles that were included in the review. Results: Literature has aggregated the most common risk factors as age, gender, marital status, social support, medical comorbidities, smoking, alcohol use, ICU environment, surgery techniques and physiological indicators, and the most important is preoperative HRQOL level. Also, the researcher highlighted several important points related to PTSD after cardiac surgery. Firstly, PTSD appears to be present in approximately 10% of the post-cardiac surgical population, with some estimates reaching as high as 38%. ICU care, fright at the time of the event, perceived threat to life, high levels of sedation and social isolation may all contribute to this developing PTSD. Patients with PTSD are susceptible to poor outcomes following surgery including greater physical complication, psychological problems, increased morbidity and mortality, affecting the quality of life and well-being. For the purpose of this study, specified risk factors related to PTSD development after cardiac surgery will be studied concerning demographics, social, medical, psychological, and environmental. Conclusion and Recommendation: HRQOL and PTSD is an important indicator to measure the outcome of cardiac surgery on a short and long term. Researchers should be aware of the effect of various related factors that could affect the improvement of this outcome.