Time to diagnosis of cancer in stroke patients

• Main Authors: Zeynep Özözen Ayas, Gülgün Uncu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Turkish Society of Cerebrovascular Diseases 2021-08-01
• Series: Türk Beyin Damar Hastalıkları Dergisi
• Subjects: stroke; cancer; duration between stroke-cancer; follow-up stroke patients.
• Online Access: https://jag.journalagent.com/z4/download_fulltext.asp?pdir=tbdhd&un=TBDHD-02360

INTRODUCTION[|]Stroke and cancer are diseases that lead to disability and mortality in society. We aimed to identify the clinical characteristics of patients who had a stroke under a known cancer diagnosis and stroke patients who were found to have cancer at the same time or during the 1-year post-stroke follow-up period. Stroke patients with cancer were compared with non-cancerous stroke patients. (not diagnosed with cancer during a 5-year follow-up)[¤]METHODS[|]Age, sex, subtype of stroke, conventional risk factors (CRF), localization, cancer types, presence of metastasis, duration between cancer-stroke diagnoses, mortality, and stroke-death periods were analysed. [¤]RESULTS[|]Fifty-seven stroke patients (35M, 22F) with cancer and 295 stroke patients (154F, 141M) without cancer were included. Ischemic stroke was most common subtypes in stroke patients with cancer (89.4%). The presence of CRF and the comorbidity of diabetes mellitus and coronary artery disease in the patients without cancer was determined to be significantly higher compared to with cancer.(p=0.000,p=0.038,p=0.000) Bilateral hemisphere involvement was detected to be significantly higher in the stroke with cancer.(p=0.012) Forty-two of the stroke patients with cancer were diagnosed with cancer before (25.9+-32.4months), and 15 of them were diagnosed with cancer after the diagnosis of stroke (5.2+-4.9months). Six of 15 patients were diagnosed with the cancer at the same time with the diagnosis of the stroke, while 9 of them were diagnosed with cancer during the post-stroke 1-year follow-up. The rate of females was determined to be significantly higher in the group diagnosed with cancer before having a stroke compared to after having a stroke.(p=0.003) 40.4% of stroke patients with cancer died in 6.7+-12.3months.[¤]DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION[|]The absence of CRF and bilateral hemisphere involvement should make us think of the coexistence of cancer and stroke. Particular consideration should be given to the potential diagnosis of cancer in the 1-year follow-up of patients after having a stroke.[¤]