Contact: Stephan Zipfel, MD
Phone: 0049 6221 568669
Email: stefan_zipfel@med.uni-heidelberg.de
Embargoed until: March 8, 2001

MONTEREY, CA-- Symptoms of depression may determine long term survival of heart transplant patients with coronary artery disease, especially if the heart disease was a cause of their heart failure.

This is the finding of a study on psychosocial predictors of survival after heart transplantation conducted by Stephan Zipfel MD, physician and psychotherapist at the Department of General Internal and Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Hospital Heidelberg/Germany. Results of the study were presented for the first time at the American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting, held March 7-10 in Monterey, CA.

The research was designed to assess the importance of psychosocial factors in the course of heart transplantation. Zipfel also tested the hypothesis that persons with a CAD as the cause of their heart failure differ in terms of their level of depression from those whose heart failure was due to other causes.

The study included 160 patients on the waiting list for a transplantation, of whom 35.6% had a CAD, 59.4% had a cardiomyopathy, and 5% other causes. In addition, 64 patients were investigated 8 weeks after transplantation.

Each participant's psychological profile was assessed using a standardized depression questionnaire, and information on age, gender, status of heart failure, and age and gender of donor was also gathered.

"This study suggests that from the entire sample of patients waiting for a heart transplantation, the subset of patients with a CAD as the cause of their heart failure (35.6%) had higher levels of depression," Zipfel said.

"In addition, this subset of CAD-patients with higher levels of depression in the preoperative evaluation showed a higher mortality rate after HTx. The same holds true for the subgroup which was additionally screened for depression 8 weeks postoperative. This result remained statistically significant after controlling for a set of important somatic factors."

The results showed that high levels of pre- and postoperative depression in CAD-patients was an independent risk factor for survival after heart transplantation.

# # #