Depression after MI confers elevated stroke risk
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
WASHINGTON — Among patients with MI, those diagnosed with depression after the event had greater risk for stroke than those without depression, according to findings presented at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session.
“We had noticed a lot of people were coming to our institution with depression after a cardiac event," Frank H. Annie, PhD, research scientist in the department of cardiology at Charleston Area Medical Center, Charleston, West Virginia, told Healio. “The idea came to look at the downstream effects. A cardiac event is a life-changing event. It prompts a lot of people to change behavior or take a different trajectory in their life.”
Annie and colleagues analyzed 495,386 patients with MI included in the TriNetX Research Network from Jan. 1, 2015, to Jan. 11, 2021. Among the cohort, 10.5% were diagnosed with depression, most post-MI. After propensity-score matching, the researchers compared 51,514 patients with MI and depression with the same number of patients with MI and no depression.
The groups did not differ in mean age (depression, 65.5 years; no depression, 66.3 years; P = .52), but those with depression were more likely to have hypertension, diabetes and chronic HF than those without depression, according to the researchers.
The group with depression had a greater rate of stroke than the group without depression at 3 years (12% vs. 8.3%; P < .01), and the difference remained significant in a log-rank test (rate of freedom from stroke at 3 years, 82.7% vs. 87.3%; log-rank P < .01), Annie and colleagues found.
“Unfortunately, we did query the system again, and the association is worse now,” Annie told Healio.
Annie said an important message from the study is that “mental health can manifest in a variety of different ways. We do not know what is driving this association. It could be a multitude of different factors, including medication compliance and long-term undiagnosed depression exacerbated to more serious depression. These individuals have had a very traumatic event happen in their lives, and mental health should be a priority. A multidisciplinary approach to is needed to say not only is this person physically doing better, are they mentally doing better, and are we tracking them long term? It is important to watch these individuals, to bring more pieces of an institution into their care and to try to improve as much as we can. This is a flare in the sky that we need to come together and do something to help.”
Collapse
Annie FH, et al. Abstract 1206-002. Presented at: American College of Cardiology Scientific Session; April 2-4, 2022; Washington, D.C. (hybrid meeting).
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts