NEW YORK — The relative risk for cardiovascular disease is about two- to sevenfold higher in Hodgkin's disease survivors compared with age- and gender-matched people with no cancer history, Dr. Ming Hui Chen said at a symposium on cardiovascular disease in cancer patients sponsored by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Similar spikes in cardiovascular disease rates occur in survivors of other cancer types, a link that is mainly attributable to the chemo- or radiotherapy that cancer patients receive, said Dr. Chen, associate director of the noninvasive cardiac imaging laboratory at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Chen and her associates have done cardiovascular-disease follow-up studies on 182 patients in the Hodgkin's Disease Cardiac Study. The patients' median age at enrollment was 43, and at entry into the study they were an average of 15 years removed from their initial Hodgkin's disease treatments.
A third of the patients received chemotherapy and the remainder had radiation therapy.
During about 4 years of follow-up, cardiovascular diseases were diagnosed in 12 patients (7%), including cases of coronary artery disease, complete heart block, drug-refractory atrial fibrillation, and valvular dysfunction.
“For patients who are aged 40–50, the rate [of cardiovascular disease] is quite high,” Dr. Chen said at the meeting, also sponsored by the American College of Cardiology and the Society for Geriatric Cardiology.