Heart failure is a thoroughly depressing and frustrating
form of heart disease in which the heart muscle simply, well, fails: it gets
gradually weaker and weaker so that eventually any effort at all is too much
effort – no capacity to do anything – and ultimately, ends in death.
The average time from diagnosis to death with heart
failure used to be under 5 years although we’ve developed better treatments and
we’ve begun to be able to diagnose it earlier (which allows earlier
intervention) so that that prognosis is not quite as bad as it used to be, but
it’s mostly still a relentless, progressive and terminal illness.
Not good, in other words.
But hey, if that isn’t enough to persuade you to work on
keeping heart healthy, here’s yet another reason to minimize your risk of heart
failure: apparently heart failure patients are being increasingly diagnosed
with cancer, as well.
This is according to a review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Now it could just be that heart failure patients are being
monitored more closely than in the past, and a consequence of better monitoring
is a greater likelihood in finding a malignancy.
It could also just be that the unfortunate consequence of
keeping heart failure patients alive longer is that they also then are alive
longer to come down with cancer – advancing age is the largest risk factor for
most cancers.
Or it could also be that some of those treatments are
increasing the risk of cancer.
Bottom line: stay heart healthy and this won’t be a worry
for you.
