It is the leading cause of hospitalization among the over 65s and the leading cause of death from cardiovascular diseases in Italy: in our country, almost a million people suffer from it and there are almost 200,000 new cases every year.
When heart failure occurs, the heart muscle tissue is in some way damaged or otherwise unable to work at its best. In this way, alterations are established that make cardiac performance less and less effective, irreversibly damaging the myocardium, and consequently worsening the patient’s clinical conditions. So says cardiology.
But it is on the psychological front that the impact of this situation, so widespread especially among the elderly, risks creating a real upheaval. Nearly one in four patients are depressed or anxious, and heart failure sufferers are 20% more likely to develop these psychological health problems in the five years after diagnosis than those facing cancer.
To say this, signaling the need for a multidisciplinary approach that does not leave the psychological aspect of the patient behind, is a research conducted in Germany by Mark Luedde of the Bremerhaven Cardiological Group Practice, which appeared in European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. The expert points out that, as psycho-oncology helps those facing cancer, it is essential to create models of targeted assistance for heart patients with heart failure, broadening the horizons of psychocardiology.
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The research started from the information obtained from the nationally representative German Disease Analyzer database, which includes about 3 percent of patients followed in the clinic, comparing the incidence of depression and / or anxiety with the discovery of breast cancer. , prostate or digestive system, starting from real life indications.
Almost 97,000 subjects with heart failure, 21,261 patients with breast cancer, 16,478 patients with prostate cancer and just under 30,000 patients with digestive cancers were examined.
In the five years following the recognition of the disease, 23.1% of patients with heart failure developed depression or anxiety compared to 25.7%, 22.1% and 15% of patients with breast, digestive and prostate. Considering together the different oncological pathologies, however, those who faced decompensation have a higher risk of developing anxiety or depression: only with breast cancer the risk appeared similar, but it was higher in the case of prostate cancer or cancer. digestive.
As if that were not enough, the incidence of serious psychological problems has increased in all patients with the passage of time, probably also due to the worsening of the general state of health and, as the research says, also due to the progressive difficulty in carrying out the normal daily activities, for fatigue, movement difficulties and debilitation.
“Depression is a cardiovascular risk factor and impacts on the quality of life: for this reason we must not make the mistake of underestimating the results of this study, given that psychological conditions can impact the very prognosis of people with heart failure – he observes Pasquale Perrone Filardi, full professor of Cardiology at the Federico II University of Naples and elected President of the Italian Society of Cardiology. Today this aspect is underestimated, but the study shows that the impact on psychological conditions is very significant in those suffering from heart failure, in practice similar to what is observed after a diagnosis of cancer “.
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For the future, experts point out the importance of assistance that also considers this factor, in the management of the most common conicities such as heart failure. “The PNRR proposes among its assistance perspectives also a greater development for territorial assistance through” community houses “- concludes the expert. Multidisciplinary teams must be programmed so that the figure of a psychologist is also included, to respond to needs of these patients, more and more numerous given the epidemiological curve of the pathology “.
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