In a new study from Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, researchers found patients with heart failure may also face a higher risk of cancer.
In the study, they looked at more than 100,000 heart failure patients and the same number of people without heart failure. Their average age was just over 72 and none had cancer at the start of the study.
Over 10 years of follow-up, cancer rates were 25.7% among heart failure patients and 16.2% among those without heart failure.
The rates were 28.6% in women with heart failure, 18.8% in women without heart failure, 23.2% in men with heart failure and 13.8% in men without heart failure.
These findings suggest that heart failure patients may benefit from cancer prevention measures.
Heart failure affects roughly 65 million people worldwide.
While heart failure and cancer share common risk factors such as obesity and diabetes, these were accounted for in the current analysis by matching
The team says it is common practice for cancer patients who have received heart-damaging drugs to be monitored for heart failure.
Conversely, evidence is accumulating to indicate that heart failure patients could benefit from intensive monitoring for cancer development—for example through screening.
Considering the high incidence of both diseases and their impact of the lives of those affected, these patients deserve the maximum joint efforts of cardiologists and oncologists.
If you care about heart failure, please read studies about a new way to treat heart failure and findings of this blood pressure drug may increase heart failure risk.
The study is published in the journal ESC Heart Failure. One author of the study is Mark Luedde.