Abstract
Patients with chest pain and normal coronary angiograms have a favorable long-term prognosis regarding life expectancy, being their survival rate similar to that of the general population. The main clinical problem in these patients is not an increased risk of developing coronary events, but the presence of disabling and recurrent symptoms. Reassurance by the physician often fails to improve symptoms and these patients continue to attend outpatient clinics, are frequently admitted to CCU for unstable angina or suspected myocardial infarction, and the great majority take cardiac medications [1-4]. This makes syndrome X patients heavy “consumers” of health care resources [5, 6]. Previous studies have shown that approximately 75% of patients with syndrome X remain chronically disabled with significant limitation to their daily life activities, usually due to persistent chest pain [3, 7-9]. The socio-economic consequences of syndrome X are considerable as between 32% and 51% of patients remain unable to work after angiography and 45% remain or become unemployed [3, 7, 8]. Thus, despite the good vital prognosis patients with syndrome X seem to have an impaired quality of life.
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When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it… your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Lord Kelvin, Lecture at the Institute of Civil Engineers, 1883.
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Atienza, F., De Velasco, J.A. (1999). Assessment of Quality of Life in Patients with Syndrome X. In: Kaski, J.C. (eds) Chest Pain with Normal Coronary Angiograms: Pathogenesis, Diagnosis and Management. Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine, vol 213. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5181-2_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5181-2_18
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