Life and past one year stressful events in coronary artery disease

Personality type and role of stressful life events in the etiology of various disease has been a fertile field for research for past few decades. OBJECT STUDY: Very limited studies have been conducted especially for the estimation of stressful life events in Indian population with coronary artery disease (CAD), so a study was conducted to evaluate the same.

Ninety patients of CAD (positive for TMT or angiographic proved coronary obstruction) formed the study material. These were evaluated by Jenkin's activity survey (JAS) for personality type and on Presumptive Stressful Life Events (PSLE) scale for life events.

The mean age of subjects was 57 +/- 8.03 years and male: female ratio was 14:1 Fifty one subjects (57%) had Type A personality while thirty nine subjects (43%) had Type B personality. Mean life time stressful life events were 3.4 +/- 1.92 which were higher (p < 0.001) when compared to respective average score of normal Indian population i.e. 10.34 +/- 5.4 and 1.90 +/- 2.62 respectively.

Based on the present study it may be concluded that Type A personality is more frequently seen in CAD and also that these subjects had a statistically higher incidence of lifetime and past one year stressful events which could have made these subjects more vulnerable to CAD.