February 27, 2007 (Miami) — An integrative approach helps relieve depression in patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to results of a study presented here at the 2007 annual meeting of the American College of Preventive Medicine.

The study, which was conducted by Valencia Porter, MD, of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine (SCIM) in La Jolla, California, and colleagues involved a review of the charts of 569 patients who had been enrolled in the "Healing Hearts" program at SCIM between 1996 and 2003.

Patients diagnosed with CVD often become depressed, and depression has been shown to hasten disease progression. Therefore, the investigators hypothesized that preventing and/or relieving depression could, conceivably, help improve the cardiovascular health status of these patients.

"Healing Hearts" is a 6-month, integrated rehabilitation program for people with CVD, which — besides standard medical care, such as blood pressure control — also incorporates integrative care, including yoga, exercise, stress management, and nutrition counseling.

To assess the effects of the program on psychological functioning, the researchers looked at various measures such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Short Form (SF)-36 (a multipurpose health survey with 36 questions, which yields an 8-scale profile of functional health and well-being) both at baseline and at the conclusion of the program. These measures were obtained on 360 patients, 57.8% of whom were men (mean age, 61 years) and 42.2% were women (mean age, 61.4 years).

"These items were collected on the patients initially and after they went through the program," Dr. Porter told Medscape during an interview at the conference. "When we looked at the data a number of years later, we found that [the patients] had improved depression scores and they also reported feeling better."

An analysis of the data showed an average improvement in BDI score of 8.4 points (P < .001) and a mean improvement of 74.6 points in SF-36 score (P < .001) during the 6-month study period.

"We were surprised by these robust improvements in the psychological scores, because the program originally was not designed specifically for this," Dr. Porter told Medscape. There were also improvements in some measures of physical health status [the primary objective of the program], she explained. These included lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglyceride levels, as well as a decrease in body mass index, she said.

"What these results tell us is that you have to treat the whole patient, not just their lipids, not just their hypertension," Dr. Porter told Medscape. "You have to make sure that they have psychosocial support, they're able to deal with stress, and you have to help them deal with depression, which is a major issue for these patients and have a significant negative effect on outcome."

ACPM 2007 Annual Meeting: Poster 16. Presented February 22, 2007.

[