Impact of Pacemakers and Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators on the Psychosocial Functioning of Paediatric Patients

Although implanted cardiac devices improve patients’ physical health, long-term psychosocial effects especially in the paediatric population are still unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychosocial effects of cardiac devices in a paediatric population.Pediatric Quality of Life Questionnaire (PedsQoL) was used to evaluate life quality, Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale was used to evaluate resilience and Brief Symptom Inventory was used to evaluate psychiatric symptoms in a paediatric population with cardiac devices.Seventy-one patients were enrolled in the study. Fifty of them (70.5%) had a cardiac pacemaker and 21 of them (29.5%) had implantable cardioverter defibrillator. When compared to the control group both implantable cardioverter defibrillator and pacemaker using patients had lower quality of life (79.5 ± 12.4 versus 86.7 ± 12.1, p = 0.001) but no difference was observed in resilience and psychological pathologies. Age, gender, family size, and education level had no effect on quality of life. Implantable cardioverter defibrillator bearing patients had higher levels of anxiety than pacemaker patients (0.58 versus 0.30 p = 0.045), and implantable cardioverter defibrillator patients who had received shock in the last year had higher levels of somatisation than the group that did not receive device shock (0.17 versus 0.44 p = 0.022).In conclusion study showed that cardiac devices have negative effects on the psychosocial health of children. Cardiologist working with these patients should be aware of these pathologies and monitor not only physical health but also psychosocial health too.