News Brief
The American Heart Association issued a new clinical guideline, which recommends depression screening for heart attack patients.
Untreated depression may contribute to a second heart attack.
The cause? Unknown at this time.
“Heart patients should be screened routinely for depression, a common complication that can make a second heart attack more likely, according to guidelines released by the American Heart Association on Monday.
“They reflect growing evidence that depression often follows a heart attack, and depressed heart patients are at higher risk for more heart trouble.
“Studies show that depression is about three times more common in patients following a heart attack than in the general community,” said Judith Lichtman of Yale University School of Medicine, who helped write the new guidelines, which appear in the journal Circulation.
“Because there has been no routine screening for depression in heart patients, we think there is a large group of people who could benefit from appropriate treatment,” she said in a statement.
“Lichtman said more research is needed to understand why heart patients are more likely to be depressed.”
Source: Reuters, September 30, 2008
Citation Source: Circulation, September, 2008.