Uncovering Phantom Shocks in Cardiac Patients with an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients sometimes report "phantom shocks" (PSs), defined as a reported shock lacking objective evidence. The aim of this study was to describe the subjective experience of PSs and their psychosocial correlates using a mixed methods approach. METHODS: PS participants were matched on sex and age with individuals who received objective shocks only (OSO). Participants were interviewed and completed measures of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version), depression and anxiety (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), disease-specific distress (Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire-CAQ), and social desirability (Socially Desirable Response Set-SDRS). Interviews were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). RESULTS: Seventeen male patients participated (PS: n = 9; OSO: n = 8). Three themes emerged from IPA: (1) PS as a somatic experience, (2) the emotional impact of PSs, and (3) searching for meaning. Quantitative analyses showed that both groups exhibited elevated trauma and anxiety levels. Effect size differences (ESD) suggested a medium ESD on depression (P = 0.176, ηp (2) = 0.118) and PTSD (avoidance: P = 0.383, ηp (2) = 0.055, numbing: P = 0.311, ηp (2) = 0.068), and a large ESD on SDRS (P = 0.081, ηp (2) = 0.189), where PS participants, comparatively, exhibited elevated levels. A medium ESD was detected on CAQ-fear (P = 0.237, ηp (2) = 0.092) where OSO participants exhibited greater heart-focused worry. CONCLUSION: The qualitative and quantitative findings of this mixed method study show convergence in terms of the emotional factors associated with the experience of PSs. PSs are often reported to be indistinguishable from objective shocks, evoking alarm, frustration, and confusion, forcing the individual to face the uncertainties of what to them is a novel and confusing experience.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".