Coronary heart disease patients live longer, but not always happier, lives
July 14, 2008Better treatments have improved survival in people with coronary heart disease, but the quality of those extra years may be less than ideal, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Compared with adults without coronary heart disease (CHD), adults with CHD scored up to 9 percent lower on four scales measuring "quality of life." Patients with coronary heart disease were more likely to say they had poorer quality of life, or describe themselves as sick, said lead author Jipan Xie, M.D., Ph.D., former health scientist in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga.
Quality of life, which includes physical functioning, psychological functioning, social functioning, overall life satisfaction, and perceptions of health status, can be used to measure effectiveness of treatment and predict the long-term mortality after a cardiac event.
Those most likely to report poorer quality of life in this study were:
-- age 18 to 49;
-- women; and
-- black or Hispanic.
The age-related difference, Xie said, probably reflects a difference in age-related expectations.
"Younger people may feel more pressure — especially younger men — in the workplace and may be more threatened by limitations imposed by their disease," she said.
Older people, especially those who were older than 65, were less likely to say heart disease limited their life or had an adverse effect on their quality of life.
"The implications of these findings underscore the need for interventions aimed at improved health-related quality of life for people with coronary heart disease — a population that has been growing rapidly," she said.
With limited resources, such interventions should be targeted at those populations revealed to be most vulnerable – younger adults, women, blacks and Hispanics, she said.
Xie said the success of interventions to reduce CHD risk and death has set the stage for the challenge of survivorship, in which large numbers of people are living with CHD. For example, she suggested educational efforts aimed at employers to help fashion work environments that would better accommodate employees with heart disease.
About 16 million people in the United States have coronary heart disease, according to the American Heart Association.
The analysis, which used data from the 2000 and 2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys, identified 2,091 people with a history of coronary heart disease from a sample of 37,386 individuals. Researchers say it is the first comparison of quality of life scores between CHD patients and non-CHD patients on a national scale.
On average, CHD patients had 2.4 percent lower mental health scores; 4.6 percent lower health utility scores – which measured mobility, self-care, usual activity, pain and anxiety; 9 percent lower self-ratings of health; and 9.2 percent lower physical health scores.
Researchers noted that men and women with heart disease rated lower on the mental health measure than did participants free of CHD. Yet, while self-rated health scores indicated that men were more affected by CHD than women, physical health scores indicated women with heart disease had more functional impairment than men. Xie said contradictory findings are fairly common in these types of analyses, but the findings suggest a disconnect between self-perception and functional ability.
Researchers said the study is limited because the disease status was self-reported and patients had various stages of CHD and treatments. In addition, there was not enough information to explain the differences in patient-reported health status among demographic subgroups.
Source: American Heart Association
-
Clinical trial teaches binge eaters to toss away cravings
Feb 10, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Potentially important new mechanisms found anti-aging effects of resveratrol
Feb 09, 2012 |
3.4 / 5 (7) |
0
-
4.5 million Americans living with total knee replacement
Feb 10, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study suggests girls can 'rewire' brains to ward off depression
Feb 10, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (4) |
0
-
Is that sleepiness during pregnancy normal or a sign of sleep apnea?
Feb 10, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (32) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (4) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (2) |
0
-
Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
More news stories
Starve a virus, feed a cure? Findings show how some cells protect themselves against HIV
A protein that protects some of our immune cells from the most common and virulent form of HIV works by starving the virus of the molecular building blocks that it needs to replicate, according to research published online ...
1 hour ago |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
|
Injured boomers beware: Know when to see doctor
(AP) -- It happened to nurse Jane Byron years after an in-line skating fall, business owner Haralee Weintraub while doing "men's" push-ups, and avid cyclist Gene Wilberg while lifting a heavy box.
2 hours ago |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
FDA-approved drug rapidly clears amyloid from the brain, reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice
Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The researchers' findings, published in the journal Science, show t ...
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Feb 09, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (55) |
21
|
Green tea found to reduce disability in the elderly
(Medical Xpress) -- A lot of research has been done over the past several years looking into the health benefits of green tea. As a result, scientists have found that regular consumption of the beverage leads ...
Teen school drop-outs three times as likely to be on benefits in later life
Teen school drop-outs are almost three times as likely to be on benefits in later life as their peers who complete their schooling, indicates research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Feb 06, 2012 |
not rated yet |
13
Lab study raises questions over nano-particle impact
Tests involving chickens have raised questions about the impact on health from engineered nano-particles, the ultra-fine grains commonly used in drugs and processed foods, scientists said on Sunday.
Iran blocks email, restricts net access: reports
Iran has further restricted access to the Internet and blocked popular email services for the past few days, in a move a top lawmaker said could "cost the regime dearly," media reports said on Sunday.
Salvage workers begin pumping fuel from Italian shipwreck
Salvage workers Sunday began pumping fuel from the shipwrecked Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, a day ahead of schedule, officials said.
Scientists discover molecular secrets of 2,000-year-old Chinese herbal remedy
For roughly two thousand years, Chinese herbalists have treated Malaria using a root extract, commonly known as Chang Shan, from a type of hydrangea that grows in Tibet and Nepal. More recent studies suggest that halofuginone, ...
New method to examine batteries -- MRI from the inside
There is an ever-increasing need for advanced batteries for portable electronics, such as phones, cameras, and music players, but also to power electric vehicles and to facilitate the distribution and storage of energy derived ...
A mitosis mystery solved: How chromosomes align perfectly in a dividing cell
Although the process of mitotic cell division has been studied intensely for more than 50 years, Whitehead Institute researchers have only now solved the mystery of how cells correctly align their chromosomes during symmetric ...