Read the study results in this article from HealthDay to discover how depression and anxiety can increase the incidence of angina.

“The overwhelming focus in the United States has been on ischemia,” the blockage of heart arteries, Sullivan said. “That is pretty unique in the world. The rest of the world takes a much more multi-modal approach to chest pain. Ischemia is not the only or most important cause of what patients are feeling.”

Stress tests and similar measures are properly used to assess ischemia in people with angina, Sullivan said. “But in addition to the kind of diagnostic studies done with stress tests, patients who have a lot of angina should be screened for anxiety and depression, because they could be very cost-effective targets for intervention,” he said.

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