High cardiovascular disease mortality after penile squamous cell carcinomas diagnosis: Results from the United States SEER population, 2005-2016

Zequan Xie; Xiangpeng Zhan; Yunwei Zheng; Yang Liu; Tao Chen; Ming Jiang; Yu Li; Bin Fu

doi:10.3389/fonc.2022.1004791

High cardiovascular disease mortality after penile squamous cell carcinomas diagnosis: Results from the United States SEER population, 2005-2016

Front Oncol. 2022 Oct 14:12:1004791. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.1004791. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Zequan Xie¹, Xiangpeng Zhan¹, Yunwei Zheng², Yang Liu³, Tao Chen², Ming Jiang², Yu Li², Bin Fu²

Affiliations

¹ Urology Department, The First Hospital Of Putian City, Putian, China.
² Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.
³ Department of Cardiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.

Abstract

Background: Cancer survivorship care is an emerging and necessary component of oncology management. To explore cardiovascular disease (CVD)-specific mortality and prognostic factors among patients with penile squamous cell carcinomas (PSCC). These results aid clinicians in furtherly understand this disease's prognosis.

Method: We analyzed Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program data for 2668 PSCC cases diagnosed between 2005 to 2016. We calculated standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) of CVD and all-cause mortality, comparing PSCC patients with general population men. A cumulative mortality curve and competitive risk regression model were utilized to evaluate the prognostic factors of CVD-specific death.

Results: Death distribution is as follows: PSCC (42.4%), other causes (21.3%) CVD (19%), and other cancers (17.3%). PSCC patients are more like to die from CVD (SMR=3.2, 95%CI: 3.1-3.3) and all-cause death compared with the general population. Meanwhile, patients undergoing surgery show a relatively higher CVD-specific mortality than the general population (SMR=2.7, 95%CI: 2.4-3.2). In the competitive risk model, higher CVD mortality is associated with age, region, year of diagnosis, stage, and marital status (all P<0.05). Patients with the localized stage show a higher risk of CVD-specific death than those with regional or distant stage.

Conclusion: Our study mainly reveals that cardiovascular disease was the important cause of death and higher CVD-specific mortality among PSCC patients. Several associated factors related to CVD-specific death are also identified. In the future, more work in educating health care professionals on the components of survivorship care is needed to meet the long-term and late effects cancer patients experience.

Keywords: Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER); cardiovascular disease; cause of death; mortality; penile squamous cell carcinomas; prognosis.