Patients with cardiovascular disease should be screened to identify and manage depression, according to a state-of-the-art review.

Dr James Murrough, from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and colleagues discuss a practical approach for screening and managing depression in patients with cardiovascular disease in their Journal of the American College of Cardiology report.

Depression — which affects one in five patients with coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease and heart failure — complicates the management of cardiovascular disease by worsening cardiovascular risk factors and decreasing adherence to healthy lifestyles and medical therapies, they say.

Yet screening of patients for depression occurs rarely in clinical practice.