CANCER is seen by many of the population as a death sentence but new research led by Scottish scientists suggests that heart failure carries a higher risk of fatality.

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen, in collaboration with the Universities of Keele, Manchester and East Anglia, found that five years after being diagnosed, male patients with heart failure were at much greater risk of dying than patients with the most common types of cancer.

The database study published yesterday in the European Journal of Heart Failure found that five years after diagnosis, men with heart failure had a 64 per cent greater risk of dying than men diagnosed with prostate cancer and a 14 per cent greater risk of dying than those diagnosed with bladder cancer. In women, those diagnosed with heart failure had 82 per cent greater risk of dying than those women diagnosed with breast cancer.

The study involved data about more than 56,000 people between 2000 and 2011 from 393 general practices in Scotland. It is the first study of its kind to compare the effects of heart failure and cancer in the primary care setting for men and women separately. The data were drawn from the source which included patient information for approximately a third of the Scottish population and represented a mixture of age, gender and socioeconomic status.

Heart failure describes a condition where the heart does not pump blood around the body as well as it should and between one and two per cent of the general population is affected by this condition.

An Aberdeen University spokesman said: “It is very common for those with heart failure to have a simultaneous or “co-morbid” illness and in this study only 5.5 per cent of those with heart failure did not have another disease as well, compared to 20 to 38 per cent of cancer patients.

“The results of this study suggest that successful treatment of heart failure should also consider treating the secondary illness.”

Professor Phyo Kyaw Myint of Aberdeen University said: “Patients with heart failure also have other co-morbid diseases, and therefore understanding of outcome in this patient group is important for clinicians. Observational studies are important in clinical research because clinical trials do not include the typical older people we manage in day-to-day clinical practice.”