Northern Ireland Cardiovascular Registry – Developing an asset for interdisciplinary research

Complete

01/11/2018

Coronary heart disease

Northern Ireland

Data

Awarded amount: £149,992

Grant scheme: TDG

Institution: Queen's University Belfast

Principle Investigator: Prof Anna Gavin

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This project aimed to answer a number of population-level questions about the relationships that exist between cardiovascular disease and cancer in Northern Ireland.

The team linked data from the Northern Irish Cancer Registry with a number of other data bases including GP prescription data and hospital admissions, and used the resulting data set to answer five main questions.

The first of these was to explore the levels of cardiovascular disease in different demographics, such as age, type of cancer and socio-economic status. They found that 35% of cancer patients diagnosed between 2006-2019 had cardiovascular disease at some point, with the most common conditions including angina and heart failure. It was also established that different types of cancer were linked with different types of cardiovascular disease.

The second and third research questions focused on those with pre-existing cardiovascular conditions pre-cancer diagnosis and how it affected their progression, survival and care.

It was found that those with CVD were less likely to be offered treatment and had lower survival that those without, even when account for other factors such as age.

The fourth question explored CVD diagnosis either during cancer treatment or soon after, finding that over 10% of all cancer patients had developed a new CVD condition within five years of diagnosis.

he final question looked at hospital admissions for heart disease both pre and post diagnosis, which found that those with pre existing CVD had significantly more days in hospital than those without. A number of these results have been determined as warranting further investigation which will be carried out in due course by the team.

Overall this project has created an important database asset for use in healthcare studies about cancer and cardiovascular disease as well as significantly improving knowledge about this landscape in Northern Ireland, resulting in a number of publications.