Psychological characteristics of patients undergoing percutaneous coronary interventions.

Background: There is few data evaluating the prevalence and influence of adverse psychological characteristics on the prognosis of individuals submitted to percutaneous coronary interventions. No study has addressed this issue in Brazil.

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of depression, anxiety, psychological stress, and Type D personality and its association with cardiovascular events in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary interventions.

Methods: Psychological characteristics were evaluated by scales: Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Lipp Inventory for Stress Symptoms for Adults and Type D Personality Scale. The end-point of this study was the occurrence of major cardiovascular events in one-year follow-up.

Results: During March and May 2006, 137 patients were included. Type D personality was identified in 34% of the cases, 29% presented anxiety, 25% presented depression and 70% of the patients presented stress. In relation to the frequency of psychological characteristics according to the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events, there was no statistical difference between both groups of patients regarding depression (29% vs. 26% p = 0.8), anxiety (33% vs. 23% p = 0.3), stress (76% vs. 65% p = 0.3), and Type D personality (33% vs. 32% p = 0.9). However, the negative affectivity score was significantly higher in the group of patients presenting events (13.9 vs. 9.8 p = 0.01).

Conclusion: In patients submitted to percutaneous coronary interventions, the prevalence of adverse psychological characteristics was high. One-year major cardiovascular adverse events were associated with baseline negative affectivity, but not with the other psychological characteristics studied.