CARDIAC NEUROSIS

Cardiac neurosis is especially baffling in the patient in whom it is associated with organic heart disease. In a recent study of this problem, Schnur¹ has suggested a procedure which may prove to be valuable in the differentiation of the symptoms and signs of the neurosis from those of the organic disease. The chief precipitating cause of cardiac neurosis in a person suffering from heart disease, he points out, is professional exaggeration of the severity of the process. Pain is more frequently a presenting symptom in cardiac neurosis than in organic heart disease, except in coronary thrombosis. Among other symptoms more common in neurosis are weakness, sighing respiration, insomnia, ringing or pounding in the ears, and faintness, dizziness, nervousness, irritability and flushes. Deep tenderness in the inframammary area in his group of patients was elicited in only 5 per cent of patients having organic heart disease, as contrasted with