Aleksandra Ciałkowska-Rysz, Mariusz Kowalczyk, Leszek Gottwald, Sylwia Kaźmierczak-Łukaszewicz increased risk of cancer death. Furthermore, hyper- tension increases risk of developing cancer, although this effect was statistically significant only in men. The link between hypertension and renal cell cancer was found earlier in a metaanalysis of more than 47,000 patients [24-28]. On the other hand, some hypertension drugs may raise cancer risks, but this theory requires more evidence. More- over, hypertension, and other common chronic dis- eases can result from unhealthy lifestyles, which can lead to cancer as well. Further studies are nec- essary. We did not analyse patients in our study with different types of central nervous system diseases mainly due to lack of complete data and prevalence of neurological disorders in the general Polish pop- ulation. Interestingly, it seemed that the primary neo- plasm diagnosis could have some impact on the number of concomitant diseases. The number of concomitant diseases was significantly lower in the subgroup with upper gastrointestinal tract cancers. In contrast, a statistically significant difference with a higher mean number of concomitant diseases was observed in the subgroup with prostate can- cer. However, these patients were statistically old- er than others (mean 77.6 vs. 68.6 years; p = 0.014). No statistical difference was found in other sub- groups depending on the primary location of can- cer. On the other hand, patients after chemother- apy had almost twice as few concomitant diseases than the rest of the studied group (1.08 vs. 1.96; p < 0.001). However, the reason may be that health- ier patients with fewer risk factors were qualified for chemotherapeutic treatment. In conclusion, the majority of home care pallia- tive patients have concomitant chronic disorders, which imposes an additional burden for the health care units and should be considered when devel- oping reimbursement programmes. 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