AN INTERVIEW TO MEASURE VITAL EXHAUSTION .1. DEVELOPMENT AND COMPARISON WITH THE MAASTRICHT QUESTIONNAIRE

This article presents an interview designed to measure vital exhaustio n (VE), a state characterized by unusual fatigue, increased irritabili ty and feelings of demoralization, which has been found to be a short- term risk indicator of myocardial infarction (Mi). This state can be m easured by means of the Maastricht Questionnaire (MQ). However, the MQ was found to have some major shortcomings for the selection of subjec ts for laboratory or clinical investigations. For this reason we desig ned an interview to assess VE. To test the hypothesis that the intervi ew registers prodromal feelings of MI, the interview was administered to a sample of 81 males who were hospitalized because of a first myoca rdial infarction (mean age 55.6 years; sd 6.8) and a sample of 168 hea lthy males (mean age 54.9 years; sd 6.9). Mean scores of cases and con trols differed significantly (7.8; sd 6.0 and 3.6; sd 4.0, respectivel y; t=5.65; p=.000). Mean scores on the questionnaire discriminated sig nificantly too, but the discriminating power was much lower (t=2.31; p =.02). The article gives derailed instructions on the way in which the interview should be administered and scored.