Rehabilitation after heart surgery is good for the patient
A recent study has revealed that cardiac rehabilitation after heart surgery helps the patient to cope with depression and significantly reduces the risk of death.
Depression has primarily been known to be associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes, but if patients who are usually depressed attend cardiac rehabilitation after heart surgery, their risk of death is notably reduced, as stated by the study.
This study, which was conducted by the researchers at Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, found that patients who were moderately to severely depress had a larger risk of death after cardiovascular surgery than patients with mild or no depression.
However, if the moderately to severely depressed patients attended rehabilitation after surgery, their risk of death was comparatively reduced.
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Rehabilitation soon after the surgery has a comparatively lower risk of death
The research indicates that patients who attend rehabilitation soon after the surgery have a comparatively lower risk of death by nearly half, said Viet Le, lead author of the study, but a more detailed study is required to determine whether other factors contribute to this result or not.
Heart research team of ‘The Intermountain Medical Center’ compiled information from a total of 118 patients undergoing heart surgery who completed a nine-question patient health questionnaire (PHQ)-9 during an outpatient visit before their surgery.
After this patients were categorized based on their results of this survey. They were categorized from having no to mild depressive symptoms or moderate to severe depressive symptoms.
Following each patient’s completion of the last questionnaire, patients were followed post-surgery to determine the association of pre-surgery PHQ-9 depressive symptoms and death.
At the final part of the study, death occurred in 6.1 percent in patients with no to mild depressive symptoms and in about 25 percent of heart patients with moderate to severe depressive symptoms, showing that the depressive symptoms were primarily associated with death.
However, in patients with moderate to severe depression attending cardiac rehabilitation significantly decreased their risk of death by 74 percent.
