A Challenge for Hemophilia Treatment: Hemophilia and Cancer

The risk of developing cancer increases with age and also adverse environmental conditions. The same holds true in the aging people with hemophilia (PwH). Furthermore, cancer is an important challenge for physicians working in multidisciplinary hemophilia care centers.

Here, the authors report 7 hemophiliacs with malignancies diagnosed and managed at our center.

Hemophilia A and B were included.

Patients with mild, moderate, or severe hemophilia A or B, who were followed-up in our center between January 1999 and December 2018 were included in the study. A total of 470 PwH (391 Hemophilia A and 79 Hemophilia B) were followed in this time period.

With a minimum 1 and maximum 20 years (median: 11.5 y) of the following time, 7 of 470 (1.48%) PwH were diagnosed with cancer. The diagnosed cancer types were acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, thyroid cancer, rectum cancer, malign melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and gastric cancer. All patients except patients with leukemia had major surgical intervention and the hemostasis control was provided on the basis of institutional protocols. At the end of the study, all of the patients were alive besides the patient with acute myeloid leukemia.

Nowadays, the management of PwH has improved immensely and the life span has progressively become similar to healthy male individuals. For accurate improvement and standardizing care, prospective data collection on the epidemiology of cancer in PwH is an important tool.