Arrhythmias & electrophysiology
Risk of cancer following presentation with new-onset atrial fibrillation using data from UK national databases
Authors' conclusion
Most of the identified potential risk factors for cancer in the AF population are also associated with cardiovascular disease. The 1-year cancer prediction models showed moderate to good predictive performance
Study context
- Population
- Patients with new atrial fibrillation (AF) and no previous cancer, UK linked primary and secondary care data, January 1998–May 2016
- Participants
- 163,549 patients
- Outcome
- Cancer incidence after AF diagnosis
- Follow-up
- 1 year
Methodological detailsTRIPOD methodology, ridge-penalized multivariable logistic regression, 70% derivation / 30% validation
- TRIPOD methodology
- Ridge-penalized multivariable logistic regression
- 70% derivation / 30% validation
Performance
As reported in the abstract
Discrimination of 1-year cancer prediction models (validation set)
- C-statistic, all cancer in men
- 0.69 (0.68-0.70)
- C-statistic, all cancer in women
- 0.63 (0.62-0.65)
- C-statistic, lung cancer
- 0.70 (0.68-0.73)
- C-statistic, colorectal cancer
- 0.70 (0.66-0.73)
- C-statistic, breast cancer
- 0.59 (0.53-0.65)
- C-statistic, prostate cancer
- 0.78 (0.72-0.84)
Further findings
Predictors of cancer
- Age associated with increased risk across all cancer types
- Socioeconomic deprivation, smoking, excessive alcohol intake, family history of cancer, CKD, anaemia and several cancer-related symptoms and signs (e.g. rectal bleeding, loss of appetite) associated with increased risk in ≥1 cancer type
Original publication
Risk of cancer following presentation with new-onset atrial fibrillation using data from UK national databases. Europace. Published 11 December 2025. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →