PTSD linked to increased heart death risk

PTSD linked to increased heart death risk
Published: Nov. 10, 2008 at 9:29 PM

MUNICH, Germany, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Patients with cardiac defibrillators may have a higher death risk if they have post-traumatic stress disorder, German researchers said.

Dr. Karl-Heinz Ladwig of Technische Universitaet Muenchen in Germany and Helmholtz Zentrum National Research Center for Environmental Health in Neuherberg, Germany, and colleagues studied 211 patients who had received implantable cardiac defibrillators -- devices that administer shocks to help restore normal heartbeat -- following a heart event in 1998. Participants were surveyed an average of 27 months after implantation and 38 reported severe PTSD symptoms.

During the average follow-up period of five years, 45 of the patients, or 30.6 percent, died.
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