Aims and Scope: Perception of health related quality of life (QoL) may result from the complex interplay between the severity of the disease and the patient’s psyche. It the present
study we assumed that anxiety and coping based on emotions may contribute to reduced QoL in patients with mild systolic heart failure (HF).
Methods: We examined mainly males with systolic HF (almost all with ischemic etiology of HF, all classified in the NYHA class II, receiving standard pharmacological
treatment). Each patient underwent a physical examination, routine laboratory tests and standard transthoracic echocardiography and completed psychological questionnaires
assessing: coping styles, sense of self efficacy, acceptance of illness, optimism and the level of anxiety and QoL (by Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire).
Results: Emotion-oriented coping was strongly positively related to an overall score reflecting QoL (r=0.37) as well as to both dimensions of QoL, with exceptionally high
correlation with the emotional dimension (r=0.24 and r=0.62, respectively, all p<0.05). More reduced QoL (overall score as well as scores in both analysed dimensions) was
significantly (all p<0.05) but weakly (r=-0.21, r=-0.20 and r=-0.26, respectively) related to lower acceptance of the illness. Higher level of anxiety was related to more reduced
QoL (all p<0.05). Reduced QoL in emotional dimension was related to the tendency to avoidance-oriented coping (r=0.26, including also a sub style based on distraction, r=0.34)
as well as to lower sense of self-efficacy (r=-0.20) and lower level of optimism (r=-0.20, all p<0.05).
Conclusion: The results indicate that HF patients are psychologically diverse, which is not related to disease severity. However, QoL was related to emotion-oriented coping and
anxiety. Psychological support for patients with HF should be focused on teaching adequate methods of coping and reducing anxiety.