Effect of Short-term Psychological Intervention on Depression Dynamics in Aortic Stenosis Patients Undergoing Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation

Objective: Since depression has been identified as relevant co-morbidity in cardiovascular patients, we aimed to assess the impact of a brief expectation-focused psychological intervention on depression dynamics in aortic stenosis patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). Methods: From 82 TAVI patients showing a Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-D) score ≥ 8 points for depression, 74 patients underwent 1:1 randomization with 38 assigned to the control (CON; treatment as usual) and 36 to the intervention (INT; psychological short-term intervention) group. The psychological intervention consisted of two individual sessions before as well as two booster sessions after TAVI. Per protocol, the HADS-D score for depression at six months was defined as primary outcome and compared to baseline between the CON and the INT group by using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Results: Regarding the primary outcome measure, there was a mean HADS-D depression score of 10.76 (SD: 2.77) at baseline and 9.44 (SD: 4.56) at six months after TAVI in the CON group and of 9.86 (SD: 2.0) at baseline and 7.5 (SD: 3.15) at six months after TAVI in the INT group. ANCOVA did not show a significant effect of the psychological short-term interventions versus control (estimate = -1.67; 95% CI: -3.64; -0.29) on depression dynamics at six months after TAVI adjusted for baseline HADS-D. Conclusions: An effect of a psychological intervention on depression dynamics could not be shown. However, there was an improvement of depression 6 months after TAVI, which is probably due to a decline in heart failure symptoms.