Cardio-oncology. Editorial on: Management and Outcomes of Patients with Atrial Fibrillation and a History of Cancer: The ORBIT-AF registry

[First paragraph] Clinical medicine and medical research have long occupied disease-specific specialties. A visitor to any hospital or university in a developed country will likely find a cardiology department or an institute of cancer research but frequently these are widely separated or even in different buildings. This is reflected in clinical research where cancer is a frequent exclusion criteria from cardiovascular trials and likewise patients with established heart disease are often routinely excluded from cancer studies. As a result our understanding of how cancer, cardiovascular disease and their treatments interact remains relatively limited. This is despite the fact that improved treatments for both conditions have resulted in substantially improved survival rates and as a result, an ever larger population of patients will now experience both conditions in their lifetime.