Just when childhood cancer survivors thought they were disease-free and out of the woods, a recent British Medical Journal study has found younger patients have a much higher risk of developing heart disease as adults. Even worse, the complications that lead to various cardiovascular risks -- among them inflammation of the heart, heart attack, heart valve problems and heart failure -- may occur up to 30 years after surviving cancer.

Those aren't the only dire numbers culled from this study of more than 14,000 patients who were diagnosed with cancer before age 21, between 1970-86, along with some 3,900 of their siblings. Cancer survivors were as much as six times more likely to suffer from heart-related diseases than their healthier siblings.

What's more, patients who survived Hodgkin's lymphoma as young people had an amazingly high 30-fold higher risk of cardiac death and an even greater 41-fold increase in mortality rates related to myocardial infarction, compared to the general population in the same age range.

Another worrisome link that harms younger cancer survivors later in life: The risk of heart problems was evident at lower exposures to radiation therapy and anthracyclines, antibiotics used to treat many kinds of cancer.

British Medical Journal December 8, 2009 Free Full Text Study

Telegraph.co.uk December 9, 2009

ScienceDaily December 10, 2009