The relationship between illness perceptions and cardiac misconceptions after Myocardial Infarction

Abstract

Research about cardiac misconceptions has focused on identifying the most common erroneous beliefs and understanding their impact on patients’ outcomes. However, less is known about the underlying structure of cardiac misconceptions and how they relate to other belief dimensions. The aims of the present study were: (a) to characterize illness perceptions and cardiac misconceptions in a sample of Myocardial Infarction (MI) patients; (b) to analyse the structure of an experimental Portuguese version of the York Cardiac Beliefs Questionnaire (YCBQ); and (c) to examine whether illness perceptions are likely to influence cardiac misconceptions. This cross-sectional study included 127 first-MI patients from both sexes, aged up to 70 years old. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were performed with AMOS. The main results showed that a two-dimension (stress avoidance and exercise avoidance) version of the YCBQ offered the best fit to the data. A significant impact of psychological attributions was observed on cardiac misconceptions, as well as a moderate impact of emotional response explaining 26% of the variance. Although exploratory, this study gives a significant contribution to research in this field, as clarification on the different concepts and the way they relate is needed. Our findings suggest that further investigation into the concepts of cardiac knowledge and cardiac misconceptions may have an important role in understanding health behaviours in the context of heart disease.

Keywords:

• cardiac misconceptions
• illness perceptions
• causal attributions
• Myocardial Infarction

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Professor Manuel Carrageta MD, Professor Gill Furze PhD RN as consultants of this research project and Carlos Catarino MD for assistance with patient recruitment. The Coronary Care Units at: Hospital Garcia de Orta – Unidade Coronária and Serviço de Cardiologia; Almada, Portugal. Hospital de Santa Maria – UTIC – Arsénio Cordeiro – Maria José Correia MD; Lisboa, Portugal. Hospital de S. Francisco Xavier – UNICARD – Cristina Ferreira MD and Miguel Mendes MD; Lisboa Portugal.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by FEDER through COMPETE and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – reference PTDC/PSI-PCL/112503/2009.