Anxiety and concerns in Spanish living kidney donor candidates.
OBJECTIVE
Donating a kidney while alive is an experience associated with important benefits for donors and recipients. In view of the inexistence of Spanish investigations, we aimed: (a) to compare the anxiety and concerns of Spanish living kidney donor candidates relating to themselves as a function of gender and their level of concern about potential kidney recipients, and (b) to analyze whether the results regarding anxiety symptoms were clinically significant compared with a representative sample of the general Spanish population.


METHODS
We selected 67 donor candidates whom we evaluated using the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Scale of Concerns Regarding Living Kidney Donation.


RESULTS
(1) The donor candidates who were more concerned about the recipients, in comparison with those who were less concerned, showed more state-anxiety and more concerns about themselves as donors, (2) the subgroup of more concerned females exhibited greater anxiety symptoms and concern about the consequences that nephrectomy could have on themselves, and (3) for all donor candidates, regardless of gender or level of concern about the recipient, the anxiety levels were not clinically significant.


CONCLUSIONS
Anxiety in donor candidates is similar to or lower than the normative levels.
Department of Personality, Assessment, and Psychological Treatment, University of Seville, Spain anperez@us.es.
María Ángeles
MÁ
Pérez-San-Gregorio
Department of Personality, Assessment, and Psychological Treatment, University of Seville, Spain.
Eduardo
E
Fernández-Jiménez
Liaison Mental Health Services, University Hospital Virgen del Rocío, Seville, Spain.
Asunción
A
Luque-Budia
Department of Personality, Assessment, and Psychological Treatment, University of Seville, Spain.
Agustín
A
Martín-Rodríguez
D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000523:psychology*; D019520:Living Donors / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Anxiety; candidates; concerns; gender; living kidney donors