Increased Risk for Atrial Fibrillation Possible in Patients with Pancreatic Cancer

Patients with specific types of cancer, including pancreatic, are at an increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AFib), according to a presentation at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together with World Congress of Cardiology (ACC.20/WCC) virtual meeting.

Previous studies have shown that cancer in general puts people at a greater risk for developing AFib but this study is the first to look at the risk for specific cancers.

Researchers identified a cohort of 143,2111,398 from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) and used Pearson chi-square and binary logistic regression analysis to assess the association of individual cancer types with AFib.

Patients who developed AFib had a statistically significant association between prostate (3.60%), lung (2.78%), colon (2.27%), breast (3.31%), pancreas (0.28%), leukemia (0.98%), non-Hodgkins lymphoma (1.18%), Hodgkins lymphoma (0.10%) and thoracic (0.03%) (P = .001).

For all cancers included in the study, the odd of AFib were 2.35-fold greater.

When examining adjusted risk for each cancer type, patients with pancreatic cancer had 0.94-fold increased risk of having AFib.

Reference

Prevalence of atrial fibrillation with cancers and associated mortality: a retrospective study. Presented at: ACC.20/WCC.