Background and aim. Modern society is experiencing an accelerated increase in the number of elderly people, to the detriment of children and young adults, in the context of declining birth rates, high adult mortality and increasing life expectancy due to advances in medicine. Cardiovascular diseases are becoming more common in the general population, representing the leading cause of death, being responsible for a third of the total number of deaths worldwide, and heart failure is the most common cause of hospitalization in patients over 65 years. Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses, presents different clinical pictures, which vary from person to person and in relation to age, being shown that there are somatic disorders due to depression, including cardiovascular disease.
Materials and method. We studied 127 patients hospitalized in the Geriatrics Department of the Calarasi County Emergency Hospital, diagnosed with heart failure (HF), being divided into 2 groups: the first group, which included 63 patients with heart failure with mildly reduced ejection fraction and the second, which included 64 patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.
Results. The main risk factor present in the studied patients was dyslipidemia, which is present in 90% of patients with a mildly ejection fraction and in 88% of patients with a preserved ejection fraction. Hypertension was also present in 75% of patients in the first group and in 63% of those in the second group. Depression was present in 67% of patients with mildly reduced ejection fraction and in 64% of those with preserved ejection fraction. The degree of depression was higher among women, 11% of those with HF with mildly reduced ejection fraction and 14% of those with preserved ejection fraction had major depression. The degree of depression increases with age, patients over 80 years presented predominantly moderate-severe depression (41% of patients in the first group, and 50% in the second). Patients with NYHA class III heart failure had predominantly moderate-to-severe depression: 50% of patients with mildly reduced ejection fraction and 67% of those with preserved ejection fraction.
Conclusion. Depression is an important independent risk factor for heart failure in the elderly patients. Due to the fact that the symptoms of the two pathologies are often similar, the diagnosis of depression can be difficult to make, which is why it should be investigated in all patients with heart failure. It is important to understand the peculiarities of the polypathology of the elderly, which often poses problems for the diagnosis and treatment of the clinician.
