MDNews - Central New York

sc r een i n g fo r P ost-tr Au MAtic str e ss d i so r d e r PatieNtS believed to exhibit characteristics of PTSD should undergo the Primary Care PTSD (PC-PTSD) Screen, suggests Donald Edmondson, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral medicine at the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University. Developed for use in primary care offices physicians prescribe medicine for cardiovascular conditions and ask patients to closely monitor their heart rates, every instance of elevated heart rate may trigger reminders of the initial episode and usher in physiological and psychological arousal symptoms. To prevent this, patients often avoid taking medications or monitoring their heart rates, increasing the risk for a second cardiac event. and used by Veteran���s Affairs hospitals to screen war veterans for PTSD, the test consists of four simple questions. If patients answer ���yes��� to three of the four questions, they have developed PTSD. Physicians use the following prompt from Prins, Ouimette and Kimerling: ���In your life, have you ever had any experience that was so frightening, horrible or upsetting that, in the past month, you��� + have had nightmares about it or thought about it when you did not want to? + tried hard not to think about it or went out of your way to avoid situations that reminded you of it? + were constantly on guard, watchful or easily startled? + felt numb or detached from others, activities or your ���like a loaded gun��� surroundings?��� Avoidance may be easier for people who have developed PTSD as a result of external trauma such as war or assault. As Dr. Edmondson points out, war veterans can avoid the battlefield or places reminiscent of war. Sexual assault view heart attacks victims may be able to avoid the people who assaulted them or as ���out of the blue��� the places where the traumas occurred. However, people who occurrences. Younger have developed PTSD triggered by an internal event, such as a patients have not yet reached the stage in life where it is heart attack or another medical emergency, carry the reminder expected for their bodies to break down, and psychologically, with them at all times. Every heartbeat serves as a reminder Dr. Edmondson says, it simply does not make sense for a of their mortality. potentially fatal cardiac event to occur. With the associated ���A stroke survivor told me, ���It���s like having a loaded gun emotions compounded by this sense of self-doubt, the event pointed at my head at all times,������ Dr. Edmondson relates. may take on even more threatening qualities. ���I think it is really important that we consider this when it Severity doesn���t matter comes to patients who have developed PTSD due to cardiac or Physicians need not dismiss patients��� fears simply because cardiovascular events. We have to take into account that, even their cardiac events weren���t serious. In fact, Dr. Edmondson after patients have been cleared by their physicians, the patients says severity doesn���t have anything to do with the development walk around with what is, in their minds, a loaded weapon of PTSD. pointed at them.��� ���We���ve found that the objective severity of the heart attack the Younger Patient���s dilemma doesn���t matter very much,��� says Dr. Edmondson. ���It���s really about Dr. Edmondson���s study reported a greater prevalence of the subjective experience. As the field of cardiology continues PTSD following cardiac episodes in younger patients. Although to make treatment breakthroughs, the more patients find that sufficient testing has not been conducted to explore the age conheart attacks are not the death penalty they once were, which nection, Dr. Edmondson theorizes it���s because younger patients may lessen the traumatization of the precipitating event.��� ��� mdNewS.com ��� MD News Central New York |7

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