[Heart disease experience of adults undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting surgery].
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the meanings of heart disease experience in patients undergoing rehabilitation post-coronary artery bypass grafting surgery.


METHODS
Ethnographic study carried out between 2003 and 2005 in the city Goiânia, Central-West Brazil. Direct observation and in-depth interviews were conducted in 11 patients undergoing rehabilitation post- coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. Using an interpretative anthropology approach, data were gathered in narrative documents and analyzed through the identification of units of meanings and thematic groups.


RESULTS
Disease-related meanings included heart disease realization, triggered feelings, formulated explanations, surgery acceptance and post-surgery life. Heart disease experience was understood as a biographic rupture, a situation between life and death, disability, loss of autonomy, inability to work. The meanings, analytically constructed, followed a logic that articulated common sense, religion and fragments of medical discourse for the understanding of disease and surgery.


CONCLUSIONS
The study results showed that heart disease and surgery experience mark a rupture in the patient's lifestyle, work and their understanding of the health-disease process. The disease experience approach contributes to transcend the limits of a medical model based on disease, its symptoms and causes, and characterized by a biomedical understanding of the health-disease process focused on biological and/or psychological malfunctioning.
Vila
Vanessa da Silva Carvalho
Vda S
Departamento de Enfermagem e Fisioterapia, Universidade Católica de Goiás, Goiânia, GO, Brasil.
Rossi
Lídia Aparecida
LA
Costa
Maria Cristina Silva
MC
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001026:Coronary Artery Bypass / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D005260:Female; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000523:psychology* / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012067:Religion; D012648:Self Care; D012649:Self Concept