the impact of medical counseling on stress and physiological factors of coronary heart patients after coronary artery bypass graft surgery (cabg) and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (ptca)

objective: stress and other emotional distress are prevalent among cardiovascular patients. this study is performed to investigate the effect of medical counseling on stress and physiological factors of patients after coronary artery bypass graft surgery (cabg) and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (ptca).   methods: this study is of experimental type with pre-test, post-test and control group. our sample consisted of 60 patients selected by a randomly accessible method and placed either into the experimental group or the control group. stress was measured by perceived stress scale (pss) and physical factors data were obtained from patients’ files twice, before and after medical intervention.   results: findings showed that post-test stress in experimental group was less than that of pci patients, though not significant. data were analyzed using spss and mancova.   conclusion: medical counseling lacked any significant effect on stress and physiological factors of these patients. the experience of stress in cardiac patients seems to be unique and different from other people, thus its measurement requires a scale specifically designed for these patients.