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Two years post-discharge, mortality up
GÖTTINGEN, Germany-Depression during hospitalization may predict early mortality after discharge.
So suggests a German group that factored in age, diagnosis, and the severity of the illness and found that depressed patients who’d been on a general medical service were 1.9 times as likely to die within the next two years as those who weren’t depressed.
In the study of 454 patients, the effect of depression was strongest on patients with cardiovascular disease, with an adjusted 2.6 relative risk of mortality, says Dr. Christoph Herrmann of the University of Göttingen. But the risk rose for all 108 seen as depressed.
Depression was determined by a two-minute interview using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Dr. Herrmann’s group reported in Psychosomatic Medicine. -Shannon Jordan
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