Heart Disease

Depression has significant adverse effects on the course and outcome of coronary heart disease (CHD). Depressed patients are twice as likely as nondepressed patients to have a major cardiac event within 12 months of the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Depression also increases the risk of dying after an acute myocardial infarction.Heart rate was measured at rest and during orthostatic challenge in 50 depressed and 39 medically comparable nondepressed patients with CHD. The mean heart rate of the severely depressed patients receiving the psychotherapeutic intervention decreased by approximately 5 bpm between the pretreatment and posttreatment assessments.

Treatments For Heart disease:

Clinical examination plays a major role in the detection of VHD in asymptomatic patients. It is the first step in the diagnosis of VHD and the assessment of its severity. In patients with a heart valve prosthesis, it is necessary to be aware of any change in murmur or prosthetic sounds.
The patient is questioned on her/his lifestyle to detect progressive changes in the daily activity in order to limit the subjectivity of symptom analysis, in particular, in the elderly Questioning the patient is also important to check the quality of follow-up, the effectiveness of prophylaxis of endocarditis and, where applicable, of rheumatic fever. In patients receiving chronic anticoagulant therapy, it is necessary to assess the stability of anticoagulation and look for thrombo-embolism or bleeding.An electrocardiogram and chest X-ray are usually carried out alongside clinical examination. Besides cardiac enlargement, analysis of pulmonary vascularization on the chest X-ray is useful when interpreting dyspnoea or clinical signs of heart failure.