The study showed the existence of a link between heart failure and the development of tumors. Patients with heart disease should be more closely screened for cancer.
Patients with
heart failure may be at increased risk of developing malignancies, according to a study published in the journal ESC Heart Failure. Note that cancer patients are often tested for heart failure, as some cancer drugs can damage the heart. And now a new study suggests that patients with heart failure, who can live with the disease for years, will benefit from regular screening for tumors.
The study authors used a special database from Germany to monitor the health of just over 100,000 patients with heart failure. Their performance was compared with the same number of people who did not have this heart disease. None of the participants had tumors at the start of the study. All were followed for 10 years, matching groups for age, sex, weight, incidence of diabetes
and other socioeconomic characteristics, as well as levels of physical activity and bad habits. It turned out that the differences in cancer incidence between groups are very significant. Thus, among patients with heart failure, any form of cancer during the observation period was detected in more than 25%. In the control group, the figure was 16.2%.
It can be noted that an increased incidence of cancer among patients with heart disease was detected in other studies. This work had a large sample and made it possible to note the differences between cancer types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancer_types. So, in patients with heart failure, tumors of the lips, oral cavity and pharynx were more common. The risk of lung cancer grew by 91%, cancer of the female genital organs – by 86%, skin cancer – by 83%. Finally, the risk of developing tumors of the colon, stomach and other types of cancer of the digestive system increased by 75%, the risk of breast cancer increased by 67% and the risk of male genital cancer by 52%.