Change in quality of life in patients with permanent cardiac pacemakers: a six-month follow-up study.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the quality of life (QOL) in patients before and after permanent pacemaker implantation. A follow-up study design was adopted and purposive sampling was applied to recruit subjects from two medical centers in Taipei City. Subjects were interviewed before pacemaker implantation. Follow-up interviews were conducted at second, fourth, and sixth month after pacemaker implantation. There were 42 subjects enrolled in this study. These subjects had moderate QOL (62.4 +/- 15.9 on a scale of 97) before pacemaker implantation and the QOL improved significantly after pacemaker implantation(p <.05). The QOL improvement reached a peak at the end of the fourth month and the scores decreased at the end of the sixth month vs. the fourth month (p <.05). They had significant improvement in general well-being, sleeping, appetite, physical activity, and physical symptoms (p <.05), but not in cognitive function, social participation, work capability and sexual function (p >.05). Subjects with spouses as their main caregivers had significantly better improvement in QOL after pacemaker implantation. Subjects perceptions of distress from arrhythmia were the most significant determinant in their QOL pre and post pacemaker implantation. The findings suggest that aggressively resolving arrhythmia distress is important for improving QOL.