Re-Analysis Suggests Psychological Treatment Does Improve Outcome.(psychological treatment can improve heart attack recovery)

2001 APR 12 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Psychological treatment can improve recovery from a heart attack, according to a re-analysis of data from the Montreal Heart Attack Readjustment Trial (M-HART), which was originally interpreted as placing in doubt the benefits of such treatments.

In the original study, no difference was seen between heart attack patients who received treatment for symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other psychological distress compared with similar patients who didn't. In this analysis, Sylvie Cossette, RN, PhD, of the University of Montreal and her associates, compared patients who benefited from treatment with patients whose symptoms didn't change.

"One possible explanation for the outcomes of the M-HART program is that the intervention may have increased psychological distress in some patients and decreased it in others, preventing observation of any treatment impact on psychological symptoms in the overall sample," she explains.

Of 1,376 patients in the M-HART study, 433 received some level of treatment for symptoms of psychological distress. Within one year from the beginning of the study, just over 1% of those whose psychological symptoms improved with treatment died of heart disease-related causes, compared with nearly 5% of those whose symptoms did not appreciably improve with treatment, she says.

Similarly, 20% of those who responded to psychological treatments were re-admitted to the hospital during the year for heart problems, while 35% of patients who didn't respond to the treatments were re-admitted.

The study was published in the March/April 2001 issue of ...