The risk of heart-specific death in breast cancer patients

Abstract

With the improvement of comprehensive anti-cancer treatment for breast cancer (BC), more and more BC survivors will die from non-cancer diseases, including cardiovascular disease dominated by heart disease (HD). Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the risk of heart-specific death (HSD) in patients with BC by using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The eligible patients diagnosed with BC between 2000 and 2019 were exported from the SEER database. The standard mortality ratios (SMR) were calculated to compare the difference in HSD between patients with BC and the general population. The Cox Proportional hazard model was used to estimate the risk factors for HSD in BC patients and the 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Overall, 655,552 eligible patients were included in our study, and 149,708 (22.8%) patients died. Among the deaths, 22,718 (15.2%) cases were attributed HD which was the second cause of death for BC patients. With the extension of follow-up (> 10 years), HD surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of death for BC (22.3% vs. 20.2%). The SMR for HD was 8.14 (95%CI: 8.04–8.25) in the whole cohort. Multivariate analysis showed that race, age, marital status, median household income, grade, stage and subtype were independent risk factors for HSD in BC patients. The risk of HSD is significantly higher in BC patients than in the general population and closely related to demographic characteristics and tumor clinicopathological factors. Medical approaches are needed to reduce the risk of HD among patients with BC.