Fontana, Johann, Wenz, Ralf, Groden, Christoph et al. · World neurosurgery · 2015 · DOI
This study looked at patients who had surgery for unruptured brain aneurysms (weak blood vessel spots in the brain that hadn't bled yet) and compared them to patients who had surgery for brain tumors. The researchers found that patients with a history of psychiatric conditions before surgery reported worse quality of life and more chronic fatigue symptoms after surgery, but when they removed those patients from the analysis, the differences went away. This suggests that pre-existing mental health conditions, not the aneurysm or surgery itself, may explain poor outcomes.
This study is relevant to ME/CFS research because it identifies psychiatric comorbidity as a major confounding factor when evaluating fatigue and quality of life outcomes in neurological patient populations. The finding that chronic fatigue symptoms were significantly elevated in the aneurysm group only when psychiatric histories were included suggests that fatigue may be complexly linked to mental health status, a pattern of interest to ME/CFS researchers investigating disease heterogeneity and comorbidities.
This study does not prove that psychiatric conditions cause chronic fatigue or poor QoL, only that they correlate with these outcomes. The cross-sectional design cannot establish causation or temporal relationships. Additionally, the study population (brain aneurysm and tumor patients) differs substantially from ME/CFS patients, so findings may not generalize; the chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms measured were not diagnosed using ME/CFS case definitions.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Fontana, Johann, Wenz, Ralf, Groden, Christoph, Schmieder, Kirsten, & Wenz, Holger (2015). The Preinterventional Psychiatric History as a Major Predictor for a Reduced Quality of Life After Treatment of Unruptured Intracranial Aneurysms.. World neurosurgery. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2015.06.047
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-fontana-2015-preinterventional-psychiatric,
author = {Fontana, Johann and Wenz, Ralf and Groden, Christoph and Schmieder, Kirsten and Wenz, Holger},
title = {The Preinterventional Psychiatric History as a Major Predictor for a Reduced Quality of Life After Treatment of Unruptured Intracranial Aneurysms.},
journal = {World neurosurgery},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.1016/j.wneu.2015.06.047},
note = {PubMed: 26142812},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/fontana-2015-preinterventional-psychiatric},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/fontana-2015-preinterventional-psychiatric
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