Mechanical prosthetic valve disease is related with an increase in depression and anxiety disorder.

Aim: Patients with organic disease can present with psychiatric symptoms. We hypothesized that since patients with prosthetic heart valve require frequent hospital followup and are at higher risk for complications, the incidence of depression and anxiety is higher in these patients.

Methods: This cross-sectional study prospectively studied 98 consecutive patients with mechanical prosthetic heart valve. All patients fulfilled prosthetic heart valve evaluation form, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAS). Complete blood count, basic metabolic panel and echocardiogram results were collected for all the patients.

Results: Using the BDI, there were 26 patients (27%) with no depression, 20 (20%) with mild depression, 38 (39%) with moderate, 4 (4%) with severe and 10 (10%) patients with very severe depression. Avarege score was 18.3±11.4 on BDI and 19.1±11.1 on HAS. The depression level was positively associated with prothrombin time (p les than 0.001) and international normalized ratio (INR) level (p les than 0.001). Hamilton Anxiety Scale was significantly correlated with comorbidities (r: 0.344; p=0.002), blood transfusion (r: 0.370; p les than 0.001), obesity (r: 0.319; p=0.007) and Beck Depression Scale was correlated with comorbidities (r: 0.328; p=0.002), in patients with prosthetic heart valve disease.

Conlusion: Patients with prosthetic heart valve have higher prevalence of depression and higher scores of anxiety and depression. Early recognition and appropriate treatment of depression and anxiety may decrease the morbidity in prosthetic heart valve disease. Besides, use of new oral anticoagulant agents that do not need INR check, could decrease anxiety and depression in the future.