Depressed Patients More Likely to Die

摘要

Dialysis patients diagnosed with depression are nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized or die within a year than those who are not depressed, suggests research from George Washington University, Wash-. ington, D.C. Researchers monitored dialysis patients for up to 14 months. More than one-quarter of them received a psychiatric diagnosis of some form of depression based on the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th Edition.rnThis is the first reported link between adverse clinical outcomes in dialysis patients and depression made through a formal psychiatric interview based on DSM-IV standards. More than 80% of the depressed patients died or were hospitalized, compared with 43% of nondepressed patients. Cardiovascular events, which previously have been linked to depression, led to 20% of the hospitaliza-tions.