The purpose of this study was to determine if renal transplantation brings mental health improvement in early postoperative period. DESIGN: a prospective study comparing mental health status in pre- and 14 post-transplantation period. 97 patients with renal dysfunction who were candidate for kidney transplant in 2002 at 2 university transplant centres were registered. All patients were enrolled were demographically and clinical characteristics, completed MMPI, GHQ-28 questionnaires 2 days prior to and GHQ-28 questionnaire 14 days after the transplantation.
Out of 97 patients registered, 80 well recruited inpatient enrolled study due to their acceptable L, F and K indices of MMPI test. Post transplant scores of the patients were better than pretransplant both for total GHQ and all GHQ subscales score (physical symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social functioning and depression) (P=0.000). Improvements were correlated with the marital status and history of previous referral to psychiatrist, however, had no correlation to patient characteristics such as age, sex, and educational level, previous history of transplantation, cigarette smoking.
Mental health improvement was observed in the early post transplantation period in comparison to the time of dialysis treatment. However a significant proportion of patients still report unrelieved mental health morbidities which suggests need for a longer period of follow time and more detailed prospective studies.