UCLA

We report disease-specific cardiovascular causes of mortality amongst cancer patients in the USA between 1999 to 2019, considering temporal trends by age, sex, and cancer site.

We used the Multiple Cause of Death database, accessed through the CDC WONDER (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research) resource. We included 629,308 decedents with cardiovascular disease (CVD) recorded as the primary cause of death and active malignancy listed as a contributing cause of death. We created disease-specific CVD categories and grouped cancers by site. We calculated the proportion of CVD deaths attributed to each disease category stratified by sex, age, and cancer site. We also examined disease-specific temporal trends by cancer site. Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) was the most common cardiovascular cause of death across all cancer types (55.6%), being more common in men (59.8%), older ages, and in those with lung (67.8%) and prostate (58.3%) cancers. Cerebrovascular disease (12.9%) and hypertensive diseases (7.6%) were other common causes of death. The proportion of deaths due to heart failure was greatest in haematological (7.7%) and breast (6.3%) cancers. There was a decreasing temporal trend in the proportion of cardiovascular deaths attributed to IHD across all cancer types. The proportion of deaths due to hypertensive diseases showed the greatest percentage increase, with largest change in breast cancer patients (+191.1%).

We demonstrate differential cardiovascular mortality risk by cancer site and demographics, providing insight into the evolving healthcare needs of this growing high cardiovascular risk population.