Preoperative Quality of Life in Patients with Small Vestibular Schwannomas.

Background: Vestibular schwannomas (VS) are benign tumors arising from the eighth cranial nerve. They often cause no symptoms for a long period of time. Due to the improved availability and quality of magnetic resonance imaging diagnostics, even small tumors can be diagnosed at an early stage.

Anxiety, Depression and Quality of Life in Pulmonary Hypertension: A Comparison of Incident and Prevalent Cases.

Introduction: Anxiety and depression are common in pulmonary hypertension (PH) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is reduced. Sufficient analyses in incident and prevalent patients are lacking, so we provide a comparative analysis of these groups with focus on anxiety, depression and HRQoL.

Methods: Depression, anxiety and HRQoL were retrospectively analyzed by Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Short Form 36 questionnaire in 91 prevalent and 21 incident PH outpatients from a German tertiary care center specialized in PH.

Chronic hyperglycemia is associated with acute kidney injury in patients undergoing CABG surgery--a cohort study.

Background: Chronic hyperglycemia (CHG) with HbA1c as an indicator affects postoperative mortality and morbidity after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery (CABG). Acute kidney injury (AKI) is one of the frequent postoperative complications after CABG impacting short-and long-term outcomes. We investigated the association between CHG and postoperative incidence of AKI in CABG patients with and without history of diabetes mellitus (DM).

Diabetes severely affects attentional performance after coronary artery bypass grafting.

Background: Diabetes is a risk factor for (micro) vascular damage of the brain, too. Therefore cognitive performance after coronary artery bypass grafting may be hypothesized worse in diabetics. To avoid observational errors a reliable tool for testing attentional performance was used.

Cardiac surgery in cases of myeloproliferative neoplasm: risk factor for stroke.

Objectives: a history of myeloproliferative neoplasms is considered to increase the risks in cardiac surgery. In patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms, increased rates of perioperative infections and thromboembolic complications are suspected, but studies analyzing the impact of myeloproliferative neoplasms on results after cardiac surgery are lacking.

Methods: 13 patients with the diagnosis of myeloproliferative neoplasm underwent cardiac surgery.

The effectiveness of a motivation programme for lifestyle change in the course of aortocoronary bypass graft surgery.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a motivation programme the motivation for lifestyle change in patients was measured before and after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery by comparing a usual care group with a group attending a motivation programme.

Design: Prospective controlled study.

Setting: University hospital cardiothoracic surgery department.

Presence of depression and anxiety before and after coronary artery bypass graft surgery and their relationship to age.

Background: Scientific literature on depression and anxiety in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) consistently reports data of elevated anxiety and depression scores indicating clinically relevant quantities of these psychopathological conditions. Depression is considered to be a risk factor for the development of CHD and deteriorates the outcome after cardiac rehabilitation efforts. The aim of our study was to evaluate the presence of clinically relevant anxiety and depression in patients before and after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).

Depression as a manifestation of latent chronic hypoparathyroidism.

The exact cause of depression in cases of hypoparathyroidism is not known. We report the first case of an elderly patient with a long history of major depression as a complication of an undiagnosed chronic hypoparathyroidism following surgery on a parathyroid adenoma. Her depression was completely eliminated by calcium supplementation therapy to restore the calcium homeostasis in serum.