Cardiovascular risk factors among cancer patients qualified for systemic treatment. Analysis of a cardiovascular disease-free cohort from the Polish multicentre study ONCOECHO.

Introduction: Cancer therapies are currently more efficient at increasing the survival of patients (pts) with cancer. Unfortunately, the cardiovascular (CV) complications of cancer therapies may adversely affect improving results of treatment. The aim of the study was to evaluate the prevalence of classical CV risk factors among pts with de novo diagnosis of cancer and thus identify the cohort of pts with potentially increased future risk of CV complications.

Material And Methods: The analysis is based on the database of the multicentre ONCOECHO study. Pts before systemic treatment (chemotherapy or targeted therapy) were included. The diagnostic datasets of resting electrocardiogram, blood samples, and transthoracic echocardiogram were analysed in 343 consecutive pts who were free from any cardiovascular disease that could adversely affect the introduced treatment.

Results: Our cohort included 4.4% of pts with kidney cancer, 7.3% with colorectal cancer, 26.5% with haematological malignancies (HM), and 61.8% with breast cancer. The risk estimated by SCORE was 4.56 ±5.07%. Breast cancer pts had lower cardiovascular risk than those with HM ( = 0.001) and kidney cancer ( = 0.002). Additionally, the HM group had much higher levels of natriuretic peptides ( < 0.001) and creatinine ( = 0.008) than pts with breast cancer. The comparison with the NATPOL population data showed that our pts were more often smokers, hypertensives, and diabetics, but less frequently presented with hypercholesterolaemia.

Conclusions: Patients with new diagnosis of cancer, who are candidates for potentially cardiotoxic medical treatment, have increased prevalence of significant cardiovascular risk factors and therefore should be followed by a multidisciplinary team during the therapeutic process.