TUESDAY, March 27 (HealthDay News) -- Patients over age 60 who have heart failure and depression have significantly poorer outcomes than patients who are not depressed, according to research presented this week at the American College of Cardiology's meeting in New Orleans.
Aldo Maggioni, M.D., of the ANMCO Research Center in Italy, and colleagues studied 18,623 older heart failure patients (mean age 78.6), including 2,405 (12.9 percent) who received treatment for depression.
The researchers found that depressed patients tended to be older and female, and were more likely than their depression-free counterparts to have a history of peripheral vascular disease (3.5 percent versus 2.6 percent) and stroke (2.4 percent versus 1.1 percent). They also found that depressed patients had a significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality (odds ratio. 1.28), stroke (OR, 1.36) and rehospitalization for any reason (OR, 1.18), but not rehospitalization for heart failure specifically.
"Effective methods to monitor and treat depression in nursing homes should be implemented to improve the quality of life for patients with heart failure," Maggioni said in a statement.
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