Psychophysiological Reactivity in Cardiac Transplant Recipients

Abstract

To assess the contribution of the heart's autonomic innervation to reactivity to psychological stressors, hemodynamic responsiveness of the denervated human heart was examined in two studies. In Study I, cardiac output measured by thermodilution, heart rate, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure responses to a 4-min mental arithmetic task were studied in 7 cardiac transplant patients during routine post-transplant cardiac catheterization. In Study II, 6 cardiac transplant patients, 5 normal controls, and 5 renal transplant patients participated in a 78-min psychophysiological stress protocol during which heart rate, systolic and diastolic pressure, and cardiac output (measured noninvasively by impedance cardiography) as well as serum epinephrine and norepinephrine were measured at baseline and while subjects performed mental arithmetic and reaction time tasks. In Study I, transplant patients showed significant increases, relative to baseline, in heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and cardiac output in response to mental arithmetic. The diastolic blood pressure response was marginally significant. In Study II, mental arithmetic produced significant reactivity in systolic blood pressure and marginally significant increases in heart rate and diastolic blood pressure in cardiac transplant patients. Reaction time produced only marginally significant diastolic blood pressure reactivity. Hemodynamic reactivity of the cardiac transplant group generally was lower than that of the two innervated groups, which generally were similar to each other. Although the small number of subjects makes conclusions tentative, these data suggest that: 1) Cardiac transplant patients are capable of significant reactivity to psychological stressors despite the absence of innervation of the heart, and 2) reactivity to these stressors is diminished relative to innervated control subjects.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)