Cancer patients who suffer a heart attack face a dangerous mix of risks, which makes their clinical treatment particularly challenging. As a result, patients with cancer have been systematically excluded from many clinical trials and available risk scores. Until now, doctors had no standard tool to guide treatment in this vulnerable group.

An international team led by researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) has now developed the first risk prediction model designed specifically for cancer patients who have had a heart attack. The study, published in The Lancet, analyzed more than one million heart attack patients in England, Sweden and Switzerland, including over 47,000 with cancer.

Overall, the results show that cancer patients have a strikingly poor prognosis: nearly one in three died within six months, while around one in 14 suffered a major bleed and one in six experienced another heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular death.