الفهرس 
Depression and the HeartOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Depression and cardiovascular disease are today considered two of the most disabling diseases worldwide that affect each other in a bidirectional manner. Depression is today established as an independent risk factor of chronic illness particularly coronary artery diseases.
One of the most cost-effective CVD secondary prevention measures is the enrollment in cardiac rehabilitation program, which addresses both the physical and the psychological aspects of the patient’s life. There are various tools at hand that can be used to assess and follow the patients’ psychological wellbeing.
Our study was held with the aim to examine the effect of cardiac rehabilitation on the depression symptoms in cardiac patients after acute coronary events.
Sixty patients who are acute coronary event survivors were included in the study, who screened for mild, moderate or major depression on the PHQ-9 score. Thirty of which completed the CR program in the CR department in Ain Shams University Hospital and 30 others dropped out.
The patient’s data was collected, including history, examination, demographics, and they were screened for depression symptoms before and after completion/dropping out of the program.
Our results showed that most cardiac rehabilitation patients were males and presented earlier with Anterior STEMI. It also showed that regardless of the patients prior risk factors, presentation or demographics, the cardiac rehabilitation program affected their depression symptoms in a highly significant manner. All the patients from the study group suffered from less depression symptoms and all those from the control group remained equally depressed or their symptoms worsened.