TUESDAY, Nov. 17 (HealthDay News) -- A telephone-based care program, conducted by nurses in collaboration with patients' primary care physicians and supervised by a psychiatrist, helps combat post-surgical depression among coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients, according to a study published online Nov. 16 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Bruce L. Rollman, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues conducted a study of 302 post-CABG patients with depression, of whom 150 were randomized to receive an eight-month intervention of collaborative care by telephone to see what impact it has on health-related quality of life.

Subjects in the participation group reported statistically significant improvements in mental health-related quality of life, physical functioning, mood, and ratings of depression, compared to the control group, the investigators discovered. Depressed men benefited more than women, the researchers found; however, a significant minority of patients did not benefit from the intervention.

"Identifying the intervention components that maximally contribute to our outcomes is also of great interest. However, collaborative care is a complex intervention involving a number of separate mechanisms that have proven difficult to disentangle from the nonspecific effects of increased attention by the care manager," the authors write. "Additional research is necessary to develop improved treatments for women and patients with resistant depression, and to examine the economic effect of this intervention."

Authors of the study reported associations with the pharmaceutical industry.

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