Patients showing signs of heart failure should also be tested for depression and offered the chance to seek counseling, according to a recent study by the European Society of Cardiology.
The study suggests that patients suffering from heart failure, and are also depressed, are five times more likely to die within a year.
Scientists acknowledge a myriad of factors of when dealing with heart disease, but stress that managing any signs of depression are important.
The study further asserts that patients who were not depressed had an 80 percent lower heart disease mortality rate, than those who did exhibit signs of depression.
“Patients with heart failure are at high risk of recurrent hospital admissions and death. Approximately 25% of patients admitted to hospital with heart failure are readmitted for a variety of reasons within one month,” according to Professor John Cleland, chief investigator of OPERA-HF and professor of cardiology at Imperial College London and the University of Hull, UK.
“Within one year, most patients will have had one or more readmissions and almost half will have died.”
The study measured mortality rates among heart disease patients within the first year of discharge from hospital.
