Resilience, Cardiological Outcome, and Their Correlations With Anxious-Depressive Symptoms and Quality of Life in Patients With an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator

Resilience is proven as a protective factor against the development of psychiatric disorders, and it has gained clinical relevance in the development and progression of cardiovascular pathology. The authors performed a longitudinal study on patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) with the primary aim to highlight the possible existence of a correlation between individual resilience capacity, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and quality of life in terms of outcomes. The secondary aim was to analyze the differences between patients with major cardiac events in the follow-up and patients without cardiac events with respect to the previous variables. A total of 80 patients enrolled in the Cardiology Unit were evaluated at T and during the follow-up through the following scales: the (RS-14), the (HADS), and the (WHOQOL-Bref). A significant linear correlation between resilience and all the areas of quality of life at T, T, and T emerged. A negative correlation between resilience and anxiety and depressive symptoms emerged, as well as between depression and anxiety and quality of life. Patients with cardiac events during the follow up have shown a worse quality of life and the onset of anxiety-depressive symptoms over time, without changes to the resilience scores. Patients without cardiac events showed an increasing trend in resilience scores. Given the speed and simplicity of use of the RS-14 scale, it seems promising to further investigate the real clinical usefulness of this instrument in the cardiology field.