Evaluating the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality among long-term survivors of classical Hodgkin lymphoma.

This study evaluated the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality among long-term survivors of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). The data showed that patients with early-stage HL are at a higher risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease than from cancer.

cHL is a cancer that starts in white blood cells called lymphocytes, which are part of the body’s immune system. Patients with HL are commonly treated with chemotherapy and radiation.

Cardiovascular disease events (CVDs) include stroke, heart attack, or death due to damage to the heart and blood vessels. CVD events are the most frequent long-term complication and a common cause of non-cancerous death among long-term survivors of HL. Previous studies involving cardiovascular side effects in HL focused only on children or young adults. However, there are few studies evaluating the risk of cardiovascular disease death among long-term survivors of cHL diagnosed at all ages.

This study analyzed 15,889 patients who were diagnosed with cHL from 1983 to 2015 in the United States.

Among patients with stage I and stage II cHL, the proportion of deaths from CVD exceeded the proportion of deaths from cHL after approximately 60 or 120 months of follow-up, respectively. The cumulative occurrence of CVD death exceeded that of cHL and other cancers over time.

In recent decades, the risk of death from cHL declined sharply. However, the risk of CVD death among patients with cHL declined quite slowly or even unchanged among some groups.

Patients with stage I or stage II classic HL experienced a higher risk of cardiovascular disease death than the general population at almost all follow-up intervals.

This study concluded that patients with early-stage HL are at a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than from cancer. The authors suggested that more measures should be taken to reduce cardiovascular disease in cHL survivors.

This study looked back in time at medical records. This study only included patients from the USA. This study did not include data on chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and other CVD risk factors.