Thanks to the advances in medicine, people with heart failure are dying less and less from this disease. However, they are more likely to suffer from cancer and die as a result of it, informs the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“People with heart failure not only have an increased risk of developing cancer, but cancer mortality is also higher in this group,” explains lead author Dr. Veronique Roger, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Health Sciences Center in Rochester, USA.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic analyzed the medical records of 596 heart failure patients included in the Rochester Epidemiology Project. They were treated both in hospital and outpatient conditions. For comparison, the same number of healthy people was tested. The study focused on two 11-year periods.
It turned out that in the years 1979-1990 in patients diagnosed with heart failure, the risk of developing cancer was 48% higher than in the control group. On the other hand, the patients studied in the years 1991-2002 had as much as 86 percent. increased risk of cancer.
Dr. Roger suggests that there are several possible causes for this dependency. It can be, among others a side effect of drugs administered for cardiovascular disease, a consequence of chronic disease stress, or some mechanism related to the physiology of heart failure, e.g., an inflammatory response.
The researcher emphasizes that this is a very important discovery that should change the standards of heart failure treatment, and in particular, include patients suffering from this disease with careful monitoring for the symptoms of cancer.
“Our results also highlight what has recently been a lot of talk in the medical world – the problem of the coexistence of many diseases in patients suffering from chronic diseases and the need to provide them with a holistic approach, and not focus only on treating the symptoms of a single disease ”Concludes Dr. Roger.
Heart failure is a disease with a very poor prognosis. It is characterized by high mortality, greater than that of many malignant neoplasms, e.g. breast, bladder or prostate cancer. Half of the patients die from it within 4 years of diagnosis. It is the most common cause of hospitalization in patients over 65 years of age in the world.
In Poland, almost a million people suffer from heart failure, in Europe – 15 million, and worldwide – 22 million people.
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