Background
Although people with cancer experience high rates of cardiovascular morbidity, there are limited data on potential differences in cardiovascular health (CVH) metrics between people with and without cancer.
Methods and results
The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey was consulted between 2015 and 2020 to assess the prevalence of health metrics comprising the American Heart Association ’s Life’s Essential 8 cardiovascular health construct among adults with and without cancer in the United States. . Health metric scores were also evaluated based on important patient demographics, including age, sex, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
Among 4,370 participants representing >180 million US adults, 9.4% had a history of cancer. People with cancer had lower overall cardiovascular health scores (67.1 vs 69.1, p < 0.001) compared to people without cancer.
Among the individual components of the cardiovascular health score, those with cancer had better health scores on key behaviors, including physical activity, diet, and sleep, compared to those without cancer, although variation was observed by age.
Higher scores on these modifiable health behaviors were observed among those with cancer compared to those without cancer in older people, in white people compared with other races and ethnicities, and in people with higher socioeconomic status.
Conclusions We highlight important variations in simple metrics of cardiovascular health among people with cancer compared to people without cancer and demonstrate differences between health metrics based on age, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. These findings may explain current racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic status disparities in the cancer population and provide a framework to optimize cardiovascular health among people with cancer. |
Clinical perspective
What’s new?
People with a history of cancer have different cardiovascular health metrics compared to those without a history of cancer, and differences in health metrics between people with and without cancer vary by age, race and ethnicity, and level of health. socioeconomic.
What are the clinical implications?
Understanding differences in simple metrics of cardiovascular health between people with and without a history of cancer may be important in an effort to target interventions to improve cardiovascular health, particularly in patients with a history of cancer.
Targeting racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities among cancer patients may be important to optimize cardiovascular health in this population.
Final message
In conclusion, our results demonstrate important patterns in the health factors and health behaviors comprising the LE8 metrics among people with cancer and show that this easy-to-use metric can provide important information across different patient groups and provide a simple framework to through which cardiovascular health can be improved.
We show that healthy behaviors , including better diet, sleep, and physical activity, are more common in people with cancer compared to people without cancer, although such behavioral differences are more prevalent in older people, white people, and individuals of lower socioeconomic status. Taller.
In contrast, we report worse cardiovascular health factors (obesity, dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia, and hypertension) in cancer patients that may provide a viable framework through more proactive treatment to guide interventions.
Assessment of LE8 metrics in people with cancer, as well as a focus on barriers to optimization of these health factors and health behaviors, may help tailor public health interventions to improve well-being and outcomes for this population. .
