Psychiatric Diagnoses in Hospitalized Patients with Neurocirculatory Asthenia

THE group of symptoms variously known as effort syndrome, neurocirculatory asthenia, Da Costa's syndrome, soldier's heart and so forth, has occasioned considerable comment in the literature. The two features on which most authors agree are decreased exercise tolerance and dyspnea on exertion; other frequent though not universal complaints include palpitation, precordial pain, breathlessness at rest and a host of symptoms such as sighing, syncope, dizziness, anorexia and nervousness. A high familial incidence has been noted.1,2Fundamentally there are three divergent theories concerning this syndrome: that it is based on specific physiologic deficits (a view held chiefly by European investigators)3; . . .