The link between heart disease and cancer Battling a heart failure can be a devastating experience. However, just because you are able to survive doesn’t mean that you have won the battle. A new study reported that survivors of heart failure face a high risk of getting cancer which could even be more than 86%. New medical advancements have contributed greatly to increase the rate of survival among patients of heart failure even with the continued increase in heart failure prevalence.

Does heart disease lead to cancer?

Survivors of heart failure also have a high likelihood of dying from a cause that is non- cardiovascular than any other condition associated to their hearts. It is this that promoted researchers to determine the probability of survivors of heart failure to be diagnosed with cancer in comparison to people without a history of heart failure.  Data was collected from 596 patients of heart failure and a similar number of controls. The patients were split into 2 periods of 11 years each to determine changes in diagnoses of cancer over time.

The two groups had a high risk of cancer for patients of heart failure. According to the researchers, patients of heart failure not only have a high risk of getting cancer, but the morality in the patients is increase by occurrence of cancer. According to these findings, it is important for surveillance of cancer among patients of heart failure. The high risk of cancer was attributed to other factors than just the survivors of heart failure being monitored by doctors very closely. These factors are stress caused by the heart failure, side effects of the new treatments given and other side effects of heart failure such as tissue hypoxia, inflammation and even hormonal activation.

Cancer- heart disease risk

Medications can play a very big role in this. ACE inhibitors are crucial for heart failure. However, no clear connection exists to cancer despite the fact that the incidence has with time been increasing. However, a very interesting theory is the fact that heart failure patients usually have lots of stressors. This is could be the link that researchers need to specialize on since the stress can predispose these patients for cancer. Also, mental stress can play a role as well but the body stress is equally an important factor too.

It is essential that future research tries to find out what could probably lead to the increased risk of cancer and put these theories into a test as a way of determining their contribution to cancer. According to these reasons, surveillance of patients of heart failure is crucial and doctors and patients are encouraged to pay close attention to other health concerns that are not related to cardiovascular disease. When a patient has been diagnosed with the heart failure, doctors should pay close attention to the patient entirely as other problems might cling in as well.