Review Article Assessing Depression in Cardiac Patients: What Measures Should Be Considered?

Copyright © 2014 M. Ceccarini et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. It is highly recommended to promptly assess depression in heart disease patients as it represents a crucial risk factor which may result in premature deaths following acute cardiac events and a more severe psychopathology, even in cases of subsequent nonfatal cardiac events. Patients and professionals often underestimate ormisjudge depressive symptomatology as cardiac symptoms; hence, quick, reliable, and early mood changes assessments are warranted. Failing to detect depressive signals may have detrimental effects on these patients ’ wellbeing and full recovery. Choosing gold-standard depression investigations in cardiac patients that fit a hospitalised cardiac setting well is fundamental. This paper will examine eight well established tools following Italian an