New doctor finds correlation between infections and cancer diagnoses
Clinical Associate Professor and PhD Kirstine Kobberøe Søgaard has just defended her higher doctoral dissertation from Aarhus University, in which she uses epidemiological data to examine the correlation between specific infectious diseases and the incidence of cancer.
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In her doctoral dissertation, Kirstine Kobberøe Søgaard takes as her starting point the scenario where a patient is admitted and diagnosed with a serious infection at a Danish hospital. By following the patients over time, she has calculated how many patients were subsequently diagnosed with cancer, and has subsequently compared the incidence of cancer in patients with infection with the occurrence in the background population.
The conclusion is that there is a significant overrepresentation of cancer cases among patients with infections, particularly in the first year after admission, but for some infections also several years later.
"I hope that my dissertation will increase focus among hospital doctors on the fact that undiagnosed underlying cancer can be the cause of infections. Greater awareness will hopefully lead to earlier cancer diagnosis for some of the patients admitted to Danish hospitals with an infection, and lead to improved survival," says Kirstine Kobberøe Søgaard, who is a medical specialist in clinical microbiology.
Kirstine Kobberøe Søgaard is currently employed at Aalborg University Hospital and Aalborg University and is affiliated with the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University.
Contact
Clinical associate professor, PhD and DMSc Kirstine Kobberøe Søgaard
Telephone: 97 66 54 24
Mail: kks@clin.au.dk, kirstine.soegaard@rn.dk