Heart failure and malignancies

In recent years, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and cancer have been the leading causes of death. Malignant diseases and heart failure are the two most common diseases in the elderly population and are responsible for most deaths. Higher general mortality has also been observed in patients with associated malignancy and heart failure, which may be partly due to the fact that optimal treatment of none of these diseases can be performe. These two conditions share a number of risk factors, such as obesity, hypertension, smoking and hyperglycaemia, but also pathophysiological mechanisms, which were considered characteristic for heart failure only, which raises the suspicion that its presence alone may be a risk factor for cancer development. It has been shown that patients with heart failure have a higher incidence of malignancies compared to the general population. On the other hand, patients with malignancy have a higher risk of CV death and a worse prognosis compared to the general population. Because of this, it is important to monitor patients with heart failure, to make early diagnosis of malignancy, adequate treatment of both comorbidities and long-term observation by cardiologists and oncologists together.