Most of us assume that strokes can only happen to octogenarians. However, a recent research brings evidence that suggests survivors of childhood cancer are at a higher risk of suffering a stroke at a young age.
The study was conducted by scientists at the UC San Francisco Pediatric Brain Center. The findings of the research shows, compared with non-cancer stroke survivors, childhood cancer survivors who already has suffered a first stroke have double the risk of suffering a second one.
The research points out that the main predictors of recurrent stroke were hypertension, cranial radiation therapy and older age at first stroke. According to the scientists, physicians could use these factors to identify high-risk patients.
The findings of the research team provide strong evidence for adapting secondary stroke prevention strategies and aggressively detect and treat modifiable stroke risk factors. The research paper was published online on August 26, in the issue of Neurology, a medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
According to Sabine Mueller, MD, PhD, co-author of the study and director of the UCSF Pediatric Brain Tumor Center in UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco, the medical community is dealing with more children who are surviving cancer thanks of new life-saving interventions. But now it is necessary to focus the efforts on dealing with the long-term problems associated with these interventions, added the scientist.
The Pediatric Brain Center (PBC) is a collaboration between two UCSF centers - the Pediatric Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease Center and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Center. The collaboration brings specialists together in order to coordinate their efforts to conduct research in order to better understand how to care for children while providing quality care for patients.
The researchers analyzed retrospective data provided by the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS). The data accumulated has followed 14,358 childhood survivors of cancer diagnosed between the years 1970 and 1986 in the United States and Canada.
The data was tracking long-term outcomes of cancer treatment. All of the participants in the survey were diagnosed with cancer before age 21. The researchers have found that overall, the rate of recurrence after an initial stroke within the first 10 years was 21 percent. This is double the rate of the general stroke survivors population. The rate was even higher, reaching up to 33 percent for patients who had received cranial radiation therapy.
