Illness Perception in Patient with Heart Valve Disease.

Profiling illness perceptions to identify patients at-risk for decline in health status after heart valve replacement

I read this article recently and although this type of research does not normally do it for me, this paper appealed to me.
I have an interest in the treatment of patients with heart valve disease. I operate on them several times a week and I also supervise a nurse-led postoperative heart valve clinic. The vast majority of patients do very extremely well and derive huge benefit from the type of surgical intervention we provide. There are however some patients who after undergoing certain interventions experience outcomes that can only be described as disappointing, even in the presence of a relatively normal echocardiogram.  I am currently supervising a medical student who very soon will validating a PROMS (patient reported outcome measures) instrument ( a quality of life survey in old currency) for patients with symptomatic heart valve disease. I hope therefore that soon we will have a set of questions that can be used to identify patients who will not do well with surgery. This paper provides important data for that quest of mine.