Fear of another heart attack may be a distinct stress factor
Stress after a heart attack is understandable – and new research into what drives such stress suggests that fear of another heart attack might play a significant role.
Understanding how that fear works, and how it is distinct from mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, is important because it could lead to better care for survivors, said Dr. Sarah Zvonar, a cardiac critical care registered nurse and postdoctoral student at the Indiana University School of Nursing in Indianapolis.
She recently presented the findings at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions conference in Chicago. The results are considered preliminary until the full findings are published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Fear of recurrence has been studied more extensively in people with cancer, Zvonar said, but less so in the cardiology realm. She was inspired to look into the topic after watching her father and the fathers of four lifelong friends deal with heart attacks and the worries that followed. The men often asked, "Is this going to happen again?"
To examine such feelings, Zvonar and her colleagues enrolled 171 people who had survived at least one heart attack between November 2021 and December 2022 and gave them a series of surveys to measure stress, anxiety, depression, fear of recurrence and how they perceived their condition.
On average, it had been about six months since the participants' heart attack. The researchers repeated the surveys about six weeks later.
Zvonar's analysis first looked at factors that might predict either fear of recurrence or...