Patients with Atherosclerotic Peripheral Arterial Disease Are at Increased Risk of Lung Cancer

Patients with atherosclerotic peripheral arterial disease (PAD) have a high risk of lung cancer and should be screened, according to a study published in the Journal de Médecine Vasculaire.

Researchers combed the Cochrane library, Medline, PubMed, Embase, and ClinicalTrials.gov for all articles published between 1990 and 2020 reporting on the prevalence of lung cancer in patients with PAD. Exclusion criteria included case reports, as well as those that included patients with coronary artery disease, cardiac valvulopathy, or carotid stenosis. The researchers used fixed effect modeling to estimate disease prevalence rate. In total, they selected 19 articles for analysis, comprising 16,849 patients.

Following analysis, aortic aneurysms occurred in 29% of patients, and atherosclerotic occlusive disease occurred in 66% of patients. Importantly, they found that lung cancer was identified in 3% of patients.

The researchers concluded that the prevalence of lung cancer in patients with PAD “is higher than that found in lung cancer screening programs performed in the general population of smokers and former smokers. These patients should be screened for lung cancer. Their selection may dramatically increase the benefit of lung cancer screening.”

Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33752847/

Keywords: Aortic Diseases, Arterial Occlusive Diseases, Lung Neoplasms, Meta-analysis, Prevalence