“Our findings suggest that patients with a recent history of stroke have a high risk of recurrent stroke after a new cancer diagnosis and may benefit from more intensive stroke prevention strategies.” – Dr. Deborah SiegalA study co-led by Drs Deborah Siegal and Rinku Sutradhar found that people who had a stroke prior to a cancer diagnosis were nearly three times more likely to have a future stroke compared to other cancer patients. They also found the more recent the stroke, the greater the risk of a future stroke.
In the study published in Stroke, the research team looked at data from 65,525 Ontarians diagnosed with cancer between 2010 and 2020. They matched 13,070 patients with a history of stroke to similar patients with no stroke history. Among those with a history of stroke, diagnoses of gynecologic and lung cancer came with the highest risks of future strokes.
Cancer is an established risk factor for stroke but there is currently no way to predict the risk of stroke after cancer diagnosis. The researchers plan to use these findings to create a stroke risk prediction tool to identify individuals at high risk and inform the development of evidence-based preventative treatments.
“Our findings suggest that patients with a recent history of stroke have a high risk of recurrent stroke after a new cancer diagnosis and may benefit from more intensive stroke prevention strategies.” – Dr. Deborah Siegal, scientist and hematologist at The Ottawa Hospital, associate professor at the University of Ottawa.
Authors: Ronda Lun, Joshua O. Cerasuolo, Marc Carrier, Peter L. Gross, Moira K. Kapral, Michel Shamy, Dar Dowlatshahi, Rinku Sutradhar and Deborah M. Siegal
Core Resources: ICES uOttawa
Funding: This study was funded by Ontario Academic Health Sciences Hamilton Academic Health Sciences Organization Alternate Funding Plan grant, and supported by ICES. All research at The Ottawa Hospital is enabled by generous donors to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.
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