Patients with cancer face more complications after heart surgery

Patients with cancer who undergo a common heart procedure often face post-surgery complications with deadly consequences, a study said.

The study, published in the European Heart Journal, studied 660,000 patients over an 11-year period who received the percutaneous coronary intervention procedure, or PCI, according to UPI.

About 10 percent of the patients either had cancer or a past diagnosis of the disease.

“Our research found that a concurrent cancer diagnosis during these procedures is not uncommon, and it has an important impact on the clinical outcomes of these procedures, depending on the type of cancer, presence of metastases, and whether the diagnosis is historical or current,” said Mamas Mamas, a professor of cardiology at Keele University and study lead author.

During a PCI, the most common intervention for patients with coronary heart disease, doctors use a stent to open up narrowed or blocked blood vessels in the heart. It’s used as both a planned procedure or in the emergency heart attack setting.

Estimates indicate between 600,000 and 1,000,000 of these procedures are performed annually.

Researchers from Keene University who wrote the study found patients with lung cancer were three times as likely to die than patients with no cancer at all. Patients with metastatic cancer of any type also faced grim outcomes after PCI.

“Our recommendation is that treatment of patients with a cancer diagnosis should be individualized, recognizing that cancer is associated with a higher risk of complications, and should involve a close collaboration between cardiologists and oncologists,” Jessica Potts, a research associate at Keele University and co-author of the study, said.