Patients with depressive symptoms have lower health status benefits after coronary artery bypass surgery

Depression is an established independent prognostic factor for mortality, readmission, and cardiac events after CABG surgery. However, limited data exist on whether depression influences functional outcomes after CABG.

We followed 963 patients who underwent first CABG between February 1999 and February 2001. At baseline and at 6 months after CABG, we interviewed patients to assess depressive symptoms using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and physical function using the Short Form-36 Physical Component Scale (PCS). The patient's physical function was considered improved if the PCS score increased > or =5 points at 6 months. Patients with high GDS scores were younger, were more often female, and had worse physical function and higher comorbidity than patients with low GDS scores. Rates of improvement in physical function were 60.1% for a GDS score <5 (below 75th percentile), 49.8% for a GDS score between 5 and 9 (75th to 90th percentile), and 39.7% for a GDS score > or =10 (> or =90th percentile; P=0.002 for the trend). Depressive symptoms remained a significant independent predictor of lack of functional improvement after adjustment for severity of coronary artery disease, angina class, baseline PCS score, and medical history. A GDS score > or =10 was a stronger inverse risk factor for functional improvement after CABG than such traditional measures of disease severity as previous myocardial infarction, heart failure on admission, history of diabetes, and left ventricular ejection fraction.

Higher levels of depressive symptoms at the time of CABG are a strong risk factor for lack of functional benefits 6 months after CABG.