Association Between Newly Diagnosed Cancer and Stroke Risk

Some evidence suggests that cancer patients are at elevated risk for stroke. To explore this association further, researchers conducted a study in which data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registry were linked to Medicare data. Each of 327,000 patients (age, ≥66) with newly diagnosed breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, or prostate cancer was matched by age, sex, race, history of hypertension or atrial fibrillation, and Charlson comorbidity index with a control patient without cancer.

At 3 months, cumulative incidence of ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke was significantly higher in cancer patients than in controls for those with lung cancer (5.1% vs. 1.2%), pancreatic cancer (3.4% vs. 1.3%), colorectal canc…