Heart Care Info - Heart Disease Prevention & Treatment

Observed Hostility and the Risk of Incident Ischemic Heart Disease:: A Prospective Population Study From the 1995 Canadian Nova Scotia Health Survey

JD Newman, KW Davidson, JA Shaffer... - Journal of the American ..., 2011 - Elsevier... Study population. The 1995 Nova Scotia Health Survey is a population-based survey implemented by Heart Health Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia Department of Health to estimate the distributions of selected health indicators and preventive practices of Nova Scotians (12). ...

Some studies have found that hostile patients have an increased risk of incident IHD. However, no studies have compared methods of hostility assessment or considered important psychosocial and cardiovascular risk factors as confounders. Furthermore, it is unknown whether all expressions of hostility carry equal risk or whether certain manifestations are more cardiotoxic.

There were 149 (8.5%) incident IHD events (140 nonfatal, 9 fatal) during the 15,295 person-years of observation (9.74 events/1,000 person-years). Participants with any observed hostility had a greater risk of incident IHD than those without (p = 0.02); no such relation was found for patient-reported hostility. Those with any observed hostility had a significantly greater risk of incident IHD (hazard ratio: 2.06, 95% confidence interval: 1.04 to 4.08, p = 0.04), after adjusting for cardiovascular (age, sex, Framingham Risk Score) and psychosocial (depression, positive affect, patient-reported hostility, and anger) risk factors.