Depressive symptoms and mortality in patients with congestive heart failure: a six-year follow-up study

BACKGROUND:

To evaluate the possible long-term effect of symptoms of depression on mortality risk among patients with congestive heart failure.

MATERIAL/METHODS:

Proportional hazard models were used to evaluate the effect of symptoms of depression on mortality among 119 clinically stable patients with symptomatic heart failure, recruited from an outpatient cardiology practice. Fifty-one deaths were registered during the six years of data collection, all from cardiac causes.

RESULTS:

Symptom of depression were a significant predictor of mortality (relative risk per 1-point increase on the depression scale, 1.05, confidence interval, 1.00 to 1.08; p = 0.016), controlling for the confounding effects of the personality trait of neuroticism, heart failure severity (proANP), gender and age.

CONCLUSIONS:

Given the long-term effect of depressive symptomatology on CHF mortality found in the present study, health care professionals should identify patients who are at risk of suffering from depression as early as possible, and should try to provide appropriate treatment. There is a need among CHF patients for studies that seek to examine whether treatment of depression reduces the risk of mortality.