Across 676 studies enrolling roughly 180 million participants, active cancer prevalence in cardiovascular disease patients ranges from 4.22% in type 2 diabetes to 5.55% in atrial fibrillation — with lifetime ('any') cancer burden reaching as high as 14.10% in AF patients and 7.04% in coronary artery disease. The analysis used one-step generalized linear mixed models to pool proportions across CAD, heart failure, AF, hypertension, stroke, PAD, and valvular heart disease cohorts.
These numbers matter for anyone managing cardiovascular risk. Cardio-oncology has emerged as a formal subspecialty precisely because cancer treatments are themselves cardiotoxic, and because shared biological pathways — chronic inflammation, clonal hematopoiesis, metabolic dysfunction — link both disease families. A 14% lifetime cancer prevalence in AF patients is striking, since AF itself may reflect systemic inflammatory burden that independently elevates cancer risk. The practical implication is that cardiovascular clinicians cannot treat the heart in isolation; oncologic history and cancer surveillance deserve routine integration into CVD care pathways.
Limitations are meaningful: pooled prevalence studies cannot establish causation, heterogeneity across 676 studies is likely substantial, and publication bias toward larger hospital registries may inflate estimates. The search window (2010–2024) excludes older data but improves contemporary relevance. This is a preprint posted on medRxiv and has not yet been peer-reviewed — findings, confidence intervals, and conclusions may shift after expert scrutiny. Editorially, this is a valuable confirmatory and consolidating work rather than a paradigm shift.
