Author Interviews, Heart Disease, Mental Health Research / 15.10.2014
Anxiety Disorders Common in Patients With Coronary Heart Disease
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Phil Tully PhD
Early Career Research Fellow, Discipline of Medicine
University of Adelaide Australia and
Abteilung für Rehabilitationspsychologie und Psychotherapie
Institut für Psychologie, Universität Freiburg Freiburg Germany
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Response: The systematic review indicated that anxiety disorders ascertained by clinical interview are highly prevalent in patients with verified coronary heart disease. Also, approximately 50% of anxiety disorders were comorbid with depression. There was however some uncertainty in prevalence estimates with high level heterogeneity observed between studies. It was also evident that studies measuring generalized anxiety disorder in outpatient samples reported an increased prognostic risk for major adverse cardiac events in the longer term, when adjusted for confounding factors, however there was limited data. There were no randomized controlled trials targeting anxiety disorders in this population.
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