Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, and cognitive weariness, resulting from prolonged exposure to work-related stress. The authors review the accumulated evidence suggesting that burnout and the related concept of vital exhaustion are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular-related events. The authors present evidence supporting several potential mechanisms linking burnout with ill health, including the metabolic syndrome, dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis along with sympathetic nervous system activation, sleep disturbances, systemic inflammation, impaired immunity functions, blood coagulation and fibrinolysis, and poor health behaviors. The association of burnout and vital exhaustion with these disease mediators suggests that their impact on health may be more extensive than currently indicated.

The authors studied certain aspects of the construct validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS), the most popular measure of burnout, and that of the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure (SMBM). These burnout measures were compared with respect to their psychometric characteristics and factorial validity in two groups of professionals, human service and other professionals (N ϭ 196 and 226, respectively), who completed questionnaires at work. As hypothesized, the confirmatory factor analyses supported a two-factor and a three-factor structure invariance across the two groups considered for the SMBM and the MBI-GS, respectively, with superior fit found for the SMBM.

The burnout syndrome denotes a constellation of physical fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and cognitive weariness resulting from chronic stress. Although it overlaps considerably with chronic fatigue as defined in internal medicine, its links with physical illness have not been systematically investigated. This exploratory study, conducted among 104 male workers free from cardiovascular disease (CVD), tested the association between burnout and two of its common concomitants--tension and listlessness--and cardiovascular risk factors. After ruling out five possible confounders (age, relative weight, smoking, alcohol use, and sports activity), the authors found that scores on burnout plus tension (tense-burnout) were associated with somatic complaints, cholesterol, glucose, triglycerides, uric acid, and, marginally, with ECG abnormalities. Workers scoring high on tense-burnout also had a significantly higher low density lipoprotein (LDL) level. Conversely, scores on burnout plus listlessness were significantly associated with glucose and negatively with diastolic blood pressure. The findings warrant further study of burnout as a predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

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Following the demonstrated association of employee burnout or vital exhaustion with several risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CVD risk, the authors investigated the possibility that one of the mechanisms linking burnout with CVD morbidity is microinflammation, gauged in this study by high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and fibrinogen concentrations. Their sample included 630 women and 933 men, all apparently healthy, who underwent periodic health examinations. The authors controlled for possible confounders including 2 other negative affective states: depression and anxiety. In women, burnout was positively associated with hs-CRP and fibrinogen concentrations, and anxiety was negatively associated with them. In men, depression was positively associated with hs-CRP and fibrinogen concentrations, but not with burnout or anxiety. Thus, burnout, depression, and anxiety are differentially associated with microinflammation biomarkers, dependent on gender.

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This systematic review suggests that implant texturization reduces the incidence of early capsular contracture in subglandular breast augmentation. However, further studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effect of texturization and confirm the long-term benefits noted in this study.