Should Doctors Know Their Patients’ Attachment Style? A Psychological Perspective and its Impact on Cardiac Surgery Outcomes

OBJECTIVE: To increase our understanding of the psychological attachment styles in order to develop a preventative strategy that could potentially improve patients’ perioperative outcomes. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was performed utilizing major electronic databases. The search was done from inception to January 2019. All of the relevant papers have been extracted and critically appraised in this review. RESULTS: Understanding the psychological aspects of patients is crucial for a satisfactory postoperative outcome. Depression and anxiety have been shown to increase both mortality and morbidity after coronary artery bypass graft surgery, independently of medical factors, although the behavioural and biological mechanisms are poorly understood. Psychosocial assessment is an important part of the pre-transplant evaluation process. The majority of individuals undergoing a transplant have significant psychosocial problems and can either be deferred or denied the transplant until these psychosocial issues are approached and managed. Psychological distress has been shown to affect long-term prognosis of cardiac patients and as a result, it should be addressed during follow-up of cardiac arrest survivors due to cardiac cause. Several studies have considered different approaches and analyses of different psychological attachments, and the understanding of such parameters perioperatively could possibly minimise perioperatively complications. CONCLUSION: Since psychological distress affects long-term prognosis of cardiac surgery patients, it should be addressed during follow-up of cardiac arrest survivors due to cardiac cause.