Heart patients say quality of life lower

ATLANTA, July 16 (UPI) -- Better treatments have improved survival in people with coronary heart disease, but not necessarily their quality of life, U.S. researchers say.

The study, published in the journal Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, found that compared with adults without coronary heart disease, adults with coronary heart disease scored up to 9 percent lower on four scales measuring quality of life.

Dr. Jipan Xie, a former health scientist in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who was the lead author of the study, said patients with coronary heart disease were more likely to say they had poorer quality of life, or describe themselves as sick.

Quality of life, which includes physical functioning, psychological functioning, social functioning, overall life satisfaction and perceptions of health status, can be used to measure effectiveness of treatment and predict the long-term mortality after a cardiac event, Xie said.

Those most likely to report poorer quality of life in this study were people ages 18 to 49, women and those who were black or Hispanic.