Cancer survivors with multiple chronic conditions: A rising challenge—Trend analysis from National Health Interview Survey.

Abstract

e24089 Background: Cancer survivors are disproportionally influenced by chronic/comorbid diseases, which were linked to more psychological distress, increased healthcare service use, higher medical costs, adverse clinical outcomes, and financial hardship in cancer survivors. However, the trend in chronic diseases remains unknown among cancer survivors. Methods: We conducted a population-based study using serial samples of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 2002 through 2018. The outcomes include hypertension, diabetes, stroke, coronary artery disease (angina pectoris, coronary heart disease, heart attack), other heart diseases, COPD (emphysema, chronic bronchitis in the past 12 month), hepatitis, arthritis, morbid obesity (BMI > 40 or BMI > 35 with obesity-related diseases), asthma attack within 12 months, weak/failing kidney, any liver disease. We included adults who 1) have a history of cancer for except non-melanoma skin cancer; 2) report outcomes of diseases. Multiple chronic conditions(MCC) were defined as three or more non-cancer chronic conditions. Multivariable logistics regression was used to estimate the annual percent change(APC) in prevalence from 2002 to 2018, using SAS 9.4 and accounting for the design of NHIS. Results: 30728 adult cancer survivors and 485233 adults without a history of cancer were included in the final analysis. We found increasing prevalence in hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, liver diseases and morbid obesity from 2002 to 2018, and decreasing prevalence in heart diseases, COPD, and hepatitis. The prevalence of MCC increased significantly in cancer survivors from 23.6% in 2002 to 29.6% in 2018 (APC 0.9%, p trend < 0.01). This was especially evident in younger patients aged 18 to 44 (APC 4.4%, p trend < 0.01) and African-American patients (APC 2.2%, p trend = 0.01). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that comorbid illnesses, especially MCC, have become an emerging public health burden for cancer survivors, which requires attention and more effective risk factors interventions. Future studies are needed to identify a better strategy to modify risk factors and prevent long term comorbidities for cancer survivors. It is also important to call for public health planning given severe chronic diseases burden for this rapid-growing but vulnerable community.