Heart failure happens when the heart cannot pump enough blood and oxygen to support other organs in your body.
Heart failure is a serious condition, but it does not mean that the heart has stopped beating.
In a study from Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel and elsewhere, scientists found that people living with heart failure may also face a higher risk of cancer.
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, the team found cancer rates were 25.7% among heart failure patients and 16.2% among those without heart failure.
By gender, 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.
The team says this was an observational study and the results do not prove that heart failure causes cancer.
However, the findings do suggest that heart failure patients may benefit from cancer prevention measures.
Heart failure affects roughly 65 million people worldwide.
The results allow the researchers to speculate that there may be a causal relationship between heart failure and an increased rate of cancer.
This is biologically plausible, as there is experimental evidence that factors secreted by the failing heart may stimulate tumor growth.
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 on the lives of those affected, these patients deserve the maximum joint efforts of cardiologists and oncologists.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about new way to repair the human heart, and this hormone could help reduce irregular heartbeat and inflammation.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about simple exercise that could strongly benefit people with heart problems, and results showing one cup of these vegetables a day can lower heart disease risk.
The study was conducted by Mark Luedde et al and published in the journal ESC Heart Failure.
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