Increase in heart surgery mortality from SSRIs or d...( rates begin to increase among patients...),Health

The researchers added that depression is associated with many physiological and psychosocial characteristics that likely explain why depressed patients tend to fare worse over time.

The researchers also found that those patients taking SSRIs were as a group significantly more often white than those who were not (85.8 percent vs. 76.2 percent) and female (43.9 percent vs. 29 percent). The SSRI group also was more likely to have diabetes, high blood pressure and increased cholesterol levels when compared to the non-SSRI group.

"We also know that depressed patients are less likely to take their medications, go to the doctor or rehab program regularly, eat healthy diets or stop smoking," Xiong continued. "It is precisely for these reasons we believe that these high-risk surgery patients need to receive appropriate treatment for depression."

"In our cohort of patients, only five percent were taking SSRIs, which we believe greatly under-represents the number of depressed heart patients," said Duke internist and psychiatrist Wei Jiang, M.D., Xiong's mentor and a senior member of the research team. "Nationally, it is believed that up to twenty percent of heart patients are depressed. This raises that concern that many depressed patients are being under-treated for their depression, and that we can save lives if we identify and treat depression appropriately."

"In many ways, this study raises more questions than it answers," Jiang continued. "It raises questions of how we treat depression in hearts disease we need to see it as a long-term, chronic condition. I think we need to conduct longer-term studies to see if anti-depression medications and psychotherapy c
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Contact: Richard Merritt
Merri006@mc.duke.edu
919-684-4148
Duke University Medical Center
25-May-2005