Vital exhaustion, neuroticism and symptom reporting in patients with cardiac and non-cardiac chest pain

In a case control study, 60 participants matched for age and gender were identified in three conditions: patients admitted with confirmed first myocardial infarction (MI), patients admitted with chest pain but with no evidence of MI, and a 'normal' control group. Amongst a number of measures, they completed the Pennebaker Inventory of Linguid Languidness (PILL) and Maastricht Questionnaire (MQ). Both MQ and PILL, alone and in combination, failed to discriminate between cardiac and noncardiac patients, only between patients and controls. The implications of these results are discussed.