Volume 32, Nº 5, September and October 2019
DOI: http://www.dx.doi.org/10.5935/2359-4802.20190082
EDITORIAL
Anxiety, Depression, Stress and the Heart: When Measurement Matters
Cristiano Tschiedel Belem da Silva
Rafaela Doebber Escobar
The interplay between cardiovascular symptoms and stress has been a matter of concern for centuries.
The first known scientific description of panic disorder, for example, which would nowadays be considered a mixture of panic disorder itself, post-traumatic-stress disorder, cardiac arrhythmia and congestive heart failure, took place in a cohort of three hundred patients of a military hospital in Philadelphia (USA). The name of the new diagnostic entity that followed (“irritable heart syndrome” or simply “Da Costa Syndrome,” named after the author of the original description) is rather na indicator of the historical overlap between cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and psychosocial conditions than properly an example of scientific rigor in describing the discovery of a new medical syndrome.1
Keywords: Cardiovascular Diseases; Life Style; Stress, Psychological; Anxiety; Depression; Imaging, Diagnosis.
