Researchers Find More Than 10% of Heart Failure Patients Have Mental Disorder Comorbidities: Presented at HFSA
"Researchers Find More Than 10% of Heart Failure Patients Have Mental Disorder Comorbidities: Presented at HFSA"
By Ed Susman BOCA RATON, FL -- September 23, 2005 -- More than 10% of heart failure patients also have mental disorder comorbidities, reported researchers here at the 9[th annual scientific meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA).
"There is growing recognition of the high prevalence of depression and impaired cognition in persons with heart failure, but little attention has been given to other comorbid mental disorders," said Steven Sayers, PHD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. "Mental disorders may interfere with self-care in heart failure patients and contribute to poor outcomes."
To determine the rate of comorbid mental disorders among Medicare patients who were hospitalized for HF, Dr. Sayers and colleagues examined a 5% sample of Medicare records. He presented the results of that examination on September 20th.
Of 13,169 patients with HF identified in that sample, the database indicated that about 1556 (11.8%) patients had comorbid mental disorders.
Depression accounted for 52.8% of patients with mental disorders; 22% had anxiety disorders and 16.7% had psychoses. Alcohol abuse was identified in 16.3% of patients with heart failure and comorbid mental disorders.
"Comorbid depression and psychoses appear to be associated with longer hospitalizations -- almost 3 days [more]," he said. All patients with comorbid mental disorders tended to have more annual hospitalizations than patients with heart failure who did not have mental disorders.
He said that his analysis shows that while patients with comorbid mental disorders tend to use more resources, except for patients with psychoses, there are no increased mortality risks. Patients with alcohol abuse disorder did not increase costs associated with their hospitalizations, he said.
"It is likely that the actual rates of psychiatric comorbidity in this sample are higher than the rates we estimated from administrative data due to common problems of underdetection and underdocumentation of mental disorders," Dr. Sayers noted.
He suggested that this type of comorbidity "may represent an important addressable source of increased costs of healthcare for patients with heart failure."
[Presentation title: Comorbid Mental Disorder among Patients Hospitalized with Heart Failure. Abstract 283]
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