Transplante cardíaco: co-morbidades e complicações apresentadas por pacientes em um hospital universitário de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are a major cause of death in many developing countries including Brazil. The heart failure is a cardiovascular disease considered severe and irreversible. Nowadays, with advance in technology and medicine the last alternative of treatment to heart failure is the cardiac transplantation. To assist the patients submitted to the procedure in a University Hospital, it is necessary to systematically know the characteristics of these patients and postoperative complications related to them. This work was developed with the following objectives: to delineate the demographic profile of patients undergoing heart transplantation, identifying the comorbidities presented by these patients before transplantation and complications presented by them after this procedure. This is a descriptive and exploratory study conducted with the records of patients undergoing heart transplantation from June/2006 to July/2009, in a University Hospital in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Our sample contains 44 patients charts which represents 83.0% of population and with the following exclusion criteria: records of patients who died during surgery and unauthorization records. The project was approved by all required instances and attended to Resolution 196/96 recommendations. The data were analyzed descriptively and the results were: the majority of patients who underwent cardiac transplantation were male (81.4%), married, with elementary education and had a profession or occupation demanding this level of education. The age ranged from 21 to 64 years (mean 45.2) with predominant age group ranging from 41 to 64 years. All were resident in Minas Gerais and most of them living on Belo Horizonte metropolitan area. Most patients (39 or 88.6%) had other comorbidities, with a prevalence of arrhythmia, dyslipidemia, hypertension and thyroid disease. These diseases can influence in progress of patients in heart transplantation postoperative situation. We've identified unhealthy habits prior to transplant such as alcoholism (19 or 43.2%) and smoking (17 or 38.6%). Chagasic cardiomyopathy was the main cause of heart failure (50.0%) in the study population followed by idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (20.5%). Complications that prevailed during the admission were alteration in blood glucose, kidney failure and infections, and after discharge, infection, rejection, and skin lesions. The mortality rate was 20.4% during hospitalization and 34.1% after one year of transplantation.