Depressed mood and subjective health symptoms as predictors of mortality in patients with congestive heart failure: A two-years follow-up study

Objective: The present study was undertaken in order to evaluate the relati onship between depressed mood (depression, emotional distress) and disease- specific subjective health symptoms upon mortality risk among patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). Methods and Results: Proportional hazard m odels were used to evaluate the effects of selected biomedical, subjective health and psychological variables on mortality among 119 clinically stable patients (71.4% men; mean age 65.7 years +/- 9.6) with symptomatic heart f ailure, recruited from an outpatient cardiology practice. Twenty deaths wer e registered during the twenty-four-month period of data collection, all fr om cardiac causes. Results indicated that depressed mood was a significant predictor of mortality with a hazard ratio of 1.9, p .002. In contrast, sub jective health was not a significant predictor of mortality in a Cox regres sion model that included depressed mood. The hazard ratio for a 1-point inc rease in Zung Depression Scale score was equal to 1.08 based on the multiva riate model. Conclusions: Results indicate that depressed mood is significa ntly related to increased mortality risk among heart failure patients. This finding is of concern to clinicians and should have implications for treat ment of patients with congestive heart failure.