Relation of personality and emotional factors to myocardial ischemia, methodology and first observations

Within the framework of a multifacet and long term research on coronary heart disease, the possible influence of psychological factors on the disease was investigated. All coronary patients admitted to the Department are examined in special sessions. The examination is concerned with the personality structure, psychiatric or psychological abnormalities regarding living conditions, emotional factors, habits, etc. The whole study is conducted in a more or less typified way. It is the purpose of this paper to describe mainly this methodology and report preliminary results from the analysis of the first 180 patients. The reported data are compared with those from a central group of 20 'normal' controls and are compared statistically.