Quality of life in cardiovascular disease.

Psychosomatic understanding of the consequences of cardiovascular disorders has had relatively little influence on the separate literature describing quality of life and evaluating interventions. This is partly because psychosomatic research has been too narrowly focussed but mainly because concepts and measures of quality of life take a limited view of its psychological aspects and neglect the significance of individual meaning. There is a need for more research which is based on carefully selected specific measures of quality of life chosen as being of particular importance to patients and to the hypotheses being tested. It is also essential to be aware of the wide range of individual response to cardiovascular disorders. Review of syndromes shows that there is considerable scope to improve understanding of the psychological aspects of quality of life and to develop and evaluate psychological interventions.