Breast Cancer and Atrial Fibrillation.

Emanuela Mauro,Gianmarco Parise,Carmelo Massimiliano Rao,Francesco Matteucci,Sandro Gelsomino,Iris Parrini,Linda Renata Micali,Cecilia Tetta,Fabiana Lucà,Orlando Parise,Mark La Meir,Michele Massimo Gulizia

doi:10.3390/jcm11051417

Abstract

This study aims to establish the incidence of atrial fibrillation (AF) in breast cancer (BC) patients, focusing on staging and anti-cancer treatment. A meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the incidence of AF in BC patients and compare this incidence to other cancers. Furthermore, we evaluated the occurrence of AF as an adverse effect of biological therapies vs. non-biological therapies vs. biological therapies + non-biological therapies in BC. Finally, we compared the incidence of AF in early BC and metastatic BC. Thirty studies were included. Twenty-two studies focused on BC, encompassing 166,271 patients. In the BC group, 2.7% of patients developed AF, while in the “all cancer” group, 5.8% of patients developed AF. In addition, there was no difference between different types of therapies (p = 0.61) and between early and metastatic BC (p = 0.57). The type of anti-cancer therapy and the staging of BC does not influence AF’s occurrence in this neoplastic disease.

Highlights

Received: 31 December 2021Cancer patients have a risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) 47% higher than patients without cancer [1–3]
This study investigates the incidence of AF following breast cancer (BC) cancer and explores whether this association is related to BC anti-cancer treatment and whether it varies depending on BC staging
Among the studies that did report information on the stage of BC, we found that 4232 patients had metastatic breast cancer (MBC), and 84,042 patients had EBC

Summary

Introduction

Cancer patients have a risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) 47% higher than patients without cancer [1–3]. An increased risk of incidentally finding cancer in patients with known AF has been reported so that this relationship might be bidirectional [4]. Several underlying mechanisms and risk factors are shared between these two entities [5]. Patients with breast cancer (BC), the most frequent women’s tumor [8], have an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) [9], and, among them, AF has been often reported in BC [10]. It has been hypothesized that the female sex might be a significant AF predisposing factor [4,11]. Apart from the direct effects of cancer and shared risk factors between the two diseases [6], adverse effects of cancer therapy [12] have been evoked to explain the association between

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Methods

Conclusion