Chest
ORIGINAL RESEARCHATRIAL FIBRILLATIONDepression, Anxiety, and Quality of Life in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
All consecutive patients with a diagnosis of AF attending our specialist AF cardiology clinic were eligible for inclusion (Table 1). Patients were excluded for the following: (1) age < 18 years; (2) previous nonpharmacologic intervention (excluding direct current cardioversion) to correct this arrhythmia; (3) malignancy of any type; (4) myocardial infarction, transient ischemic attack/stroke, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty within the
Results
The majority of AF subjects were male (61.4%), white (89.7%), and unemployed (70.1%), with a median duration of diagnosed AF being 21 months (interquartile range, 8 to 49 months). Participants had recurrent AF in 58.4% (paroxysmal AF, 52.5%; persistent AF, 5.9%) and permanent AF in 41.6%. Hypertension was the most common coexisting cardiovascular comorbidity (88.1%), followed by diabetes mellitus (10.9%). The majority of AF patients were receiving some form of anticoagulant (warfarin, 72.3%) or
Discussion
Depression and anxiety have been found to be strong predictor of QoL in myocardial infarction patients.17 Although QoL has been extensively studied in patients with AF,8 depression and anxiety have yet to receive attention. There has been no previous examination of the association of the affective status of AF patients and their QoL.
Rates of depression and trait anxiety observed in our AF cohort were comparable to that seen in patients following myocardial infarction,131819202122 implying
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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.