Facts

Contact person:
Vedrana Vejzovic
Financer:
  • BH Heart Centre Tuzla - International University Brcko
Responsible at MaU:
Vedrana Vejzovic
Project members at MaU:
Time frame:
27 February 2020 - 30 January 2028
Faculty/department:
Research subject:

About the project

Bakgrund

Background Cardiovascular diseases affect a high number of persons worldwide and for several of those, surgery is often necessary as treatment. Postoperative recovery is a complex process and one of the known reasons for slower postoperative recovery is pain and the negative consequences of pain include increased morbidity, decreased physical function and quality of life, prolonged postoperative recovery, extended pain therapy. To be able to help these patients to resume their normal daily activities after surgery, it is important to better understand the patients' perspective of life, both before and after surgery, post-operative recovery including pain and quality of life.

Aim

The overall aim of this thesis is to explore the patients´ perspective of life before and after cardiovascular surgery. A further aim is to investigate post-operative pain, post-operative recovery and quality of life after cardiovascular surgery.

Method

In this thesis, a combination of qualitative (I) and quantitative (II, III and IV) designs and different methods will be used. The participants will be recruited from the cardio-surgery ward at Medical Institute Bayer in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Study I

An inductive qualitative design is chosen to illuminate patients' experience of life before cardiovascular surgery. In order to illuminate patients´ experiences data through interviews will be collected from approximately 15-20 patients, aged 18 to 65 years. The data will be collected on one occasion, before surgery.

Study II

The aim of this study is to evaluate postoperative pain one week after coronary surgery. Pain will be measured using the Behavioral Pain Scale, BPS, during the first 24 hours after surgery and the Visual Analog Scale, VAS, for measuring pain during one week after surgery.

Study III

The aim of this study is to assess the Quality of Recovery during 6 months after surgery using an instrument, Quality of Recovery 15. Data collection will be conducted day 7th after surgery before discharge from the hospital and after two and sixth months after leaving the hospital.

Study IV

The aim of this study is to assess the quality of life of patients after heart surgery. To achieve this, the WHO´s quality of life WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire will be used and data will be collected two, six and twelve months after cardiac surgery. The Medical Institute Bayer Ethics Committee approved the study to be conducted ( MIB, Medical Institute Bayer, Tuzla 2020-08-10).