The Impact of Thrombolytic Therapy on Anxiety, Depression and Quality of Life of Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke.

Background: It is well established that thrombolytic therapy improves the functional recovery by reducing disability measured as National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) and Rankin score in patients with ischemic stroke. However, the role of alteplase treatment on anxiety and depression in those patients is less clear. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether patients treated with thrombolytic therapy had a better quality of life, less anxiety and depression compared to patients who were not treated with thrombolysis.

Subjects And Methods: In this "single canter study" 60 patients with acute ischemic stroke were divided into two groups: alteplase treated (AT) group, and not treated (NT) group. The sociodemographic data including gender, age, marital status, education, employment, financial status, place of residence, refugee status were collected at the beginning of study. The NIHSS score and modified Rankin score (mRS) were performed on admission and at discharge from hospital. Six months following discard from hospital the Beck's Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Short Form 36 quality of life (SF-36 QoL) were performed.

Results: There were no differences in mean NIHSS and mRS at admission to hospital between the groups. At discharge from hospital patients in AT group had significantly lower NIHSS and mRS than patients in NT group. In post-stroke period the patients from AT group had significantly less anxiety and depression than patients from NT group (BAI in AT 6.4+4.17 vs BAI in NT 14.27+7.01 and BDI in AT 9.20+6.61 vs BDI in NT 18.0+7.49). Patients in AT group had significantly better SF-36 QoL score in all components than NT group.

Conclusion: The results of this study showed that thrombolytic therapy reduced the intensity of anxiety and depression and improves the quality of life of patients six months after ischemic stroke.