NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE — Previous research has shown a link between cancer and subsequent stroke, but a new study found the reverse relationship — that patients who have had a stroke are at higher risk for cancer.
The study suggests that the incidence of cancer is 1.4 times higher among stroke survivors at 2 years than the general population, and that having cancer increases the risk for death by 3-fold in stroke survivors.
These results “hopefully help us to understand better that cancer and stroke are not mutually exclusive disease entities,” as has previously been thought, lead author Adnan Qureshi, MD, professor of neurology, neurosurgery and radiology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, told a press conference here.
“There is clearly a higher risk of cancer in patients with ischemic stroke as compared with the general population, and that higher risk of incident cancer explains in part why these patients have a higher chance of dying over the next few years compared to their counterparts who haven’t developed a stroke,” he added.
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