Strong risk factors for depression and anxiety in heart failure patients

Abstract

Despite advancing medical technology, Heart Failure (HF) is still a prevalent disease with high mortality and high health expenditure. To improve patient outcome and prognosis, it is important to identify the association of risk factors which leads to the co-morbid depression and anxiety in heart failure patients. Objectives: To determine the association of depression and/or anxiety with age, gender and ejection fraction in heart failure patients. Methods: It is an analytical cross sectional study including 323 CHF patients who visited the to the Faisalabad Institute of Cardiology hospital Out-Patient Department, 250 were males and 73 were females, mean age was 54.1 ± 9.2 years having 70 years as maximum and 25 years as minimum. Data collection was done using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) questionnaire to assess depression and anxiety. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 24. For quantitative data, mean and standard deviation was calculated and for qualitative data frequency and percentages was calculated. To measure the association of anxiety and depression with age categories, ejection fraction and gender, chi square test was used. P values less than and equal to 0.05 were taken as significant. Results: No association of depression and anxiety with gender and Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF) was observed. However, depression and anxiety were found to be significantly associated with age Conclusions: The study concluded that age is a strong risk factor of depression and anxiety in congestive heart failure patients. Multidisciplinary health care team approach and interventions are required to cater chronic heart failure (CHF) patients to address the psychological burden.