Post-traumatic stress disorder and neuropsychologic impairment among cardiac surgery patients

The article by Hudetz et al¹ covers the exhaustively documented topic of neuropsychologic impairment after cardiac surgery among a sample of 86 male patients recruited from a Veterans Affairs hospital. The potentially novel information provided by this study is the comparison of persons supposedly with and without post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) under-going cardiac surgery. A sample of nonsurgical hospital patients with coronary artery disease, as specified by medical notes, also was recruited. Whether these patients were also screened for a history of PTSD was not reported although 29% had a history of depression.