ArticlePLoS medicine2022
The relationship between congenital heart disease and cancer in Swedish children: A population-based cohort study.
Article in PLoS medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Risk of Cancer in Patients with Congenital Heart Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Cardiology · 2025Pooled it
- New Zealand Electronic Health Data for Cardiovascular Research: A Review.Clinical epidemiology · 2026Review
- Mortality after cancer diagnosis among children with congenital heart disease in Denmark and Sweden.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2025Article
- Cancer mortality in children surviving congenital heart interventions: A study from the Pediatric Cardiac Care Consortium.Pediatric blood & cancer · 2024Article
- The impact of congenital heart disease on treatment and survival of patients with hepatoblastoma: A single-center experience.Pediatric blood & cancer · 2024Article
- Cumulative Radiation Exposure and Lifetime Cancer Risk in Patients With Tetralogy of Fallot Requiring Early Intervention.JACC. Advances · 2024Article
- Cancer risk in individuals with polydactyly: a Swedish population-based cohort study.British journal of cancer · 2024Article
- Role of non-chromosomal birth defects on the risk of developing childhood Hodgkin lymphoma: A Children's Oncology Group study.Pediatric blood & cancer · 2024Article
- Thymic Atrophy and Immune Dysregulation in Infants with Complex Congenital Heart Disease.Journal of clinical immunology · 2024Article
- CanCHD Study of Hematopoietic Cancers in Children With and Without Genetic Syndromes.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2024Article
- The risks of birth defects and childhood cancer with conception by assisted reproductive technology.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Congenital Heart Disease and the Risk of Cancer: An Update on the Genetic Etiology, Radiation Exposure Damage, and Future Research Strategies.Journal of cardiovascular development and disease · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundBirth defects have been consistently associated with elevated childhood cancer risks; however, the relationship between congenital heart disease (CHD) and childhood cancer remains conflicting. Considering the increasing patient population with CHD after improvements in their life expectancies, insights into this relationship are particularly compelling. Thus, we aimed to determine the relationship between CHD and cancer in Swedish children. METHODS AND
findingsAll individuals registered in the Swedish Medical Birth Register (MBR) between 1973 and 2014 were included in this population-based cohort study (n = 4,178,722). Individuals with CHD (n = 66,892) were identified from the MBR and National Patient Register, whereas cancer diagnoses were retrieved from the Swedish Cancer Register. The relationship between CHD and childhood cancer (<20 years at diagnosis) was evaluated using Cox proportional hazards regression models. We observed increased risks of cancer overall, leukemia, lymphoma, and hepatoblastoma in children with CHD, but after adjustment for Down syndrome, only the increased lymphoma (hazard ratio (HR) = 1.64, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11 to 2.44) and hepatoblastoma (HR = 3.94, 95% CI 1.83 to 8.47) risk remained. However, when restricting to CHD diagnoses from the MBR only, i.e., those diagnosed around birth, the risk for childhood cancer overall (HR = 1.45, 95% CI 1.23 to 1.71) and leukemia (HR = 1.41, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.84) was more pronounced, even after controlling for Down syndrome. Finally, a substantially elevated lymphoma risk (HR = 8.13, 95% CI 4.06 to 16.30) was observed in children with complex CHD. Limitations of the study include the National Patient Register not being nationwide until 1987, in addition to the rareness of the conditions under study providing limited power for analyses on the rarer cancer subtypes.
conclusionsWe found associations between CHD and childhood lymphomas and hepatoblastomas not explained by a diagnosis of Down syndrome. Stronger associations were observed in complex CHD.
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