Spiritual Well-Being and Its Association with Coronary Artery Disease.

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of mortality in the world, generating important socioeconomic and cultural impacts. Spirituality has been associated with the main risk factors for acute myocardial infarction, influencing lifestyle, and drug treatment compliance. Estimate the level of spiritual well-being and its association with coronary artery disease. We conducted a case-control study with 88 adults (42 cases and 46 controls) individually interviewed. Using a spiritual well-being scale and collecting socioeconomic and demographic information. We compared groups by Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests. Friedman's analysis of variance was used to evaluate the differences between the values assigned to the scale items in each group. Statistically, there was no significant difference between categories and levels of spiritual well-being in any of the groups. Both had high rates, driven by the high level of religious well-being. There was no difference between the rates attributed to the items on the subscale of religious well-being, in the case or control groups (p = 0.959 and p = 0.817). However, the existential well-being subscale revealed variability between the scores attributed to each item in both groups (p < 0.001). The results revealed a high level of spiritual well-being in the analyzed sample. There was no correlation between the levels of spiritual, religious, and existential well-being with coronary artery disease, possibly due to the reduced ability of the religious well-being subscale to discriminate between groups.