What is it about?
A wide spectrum of radiation‑induced heart disease (RIHD) includes: coronary heart disease (CHD), pericardial disease (acute pericarditis, delayed pericarditis, pericardial effusion, and constrictive pericarditis), congestive heart failure (CHF), valvular heart disease, cardiomyopathy, and arrhythmias. The RIHD can occur following even lower radiation doses (e.g., mean cardiac doses of 3–17 Gy in breast cancer patients treated with radiotherapy (RT) post mastectomy). This article reviews cardiotoxicity associated with RT, and outlines the main strategies to assess, monitor, reduce, or possibly prevent RT‑induced cardiotoxicity, in women with breast cancer.
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Why is it important?
It is crucial to realize that cardiotoxicity can occur immediately upon administration of the RT, or it may have a delayed onset (even years after RT). Therefore, it is of utmost importance that the patients with breast cancer are in their best cardiac condition, before they initiate oncologic therapy, during remission, and after the RT termination. This review facilitates a delivery of the most appropriate cardiac care, during each step of the antineoplastic therapy.
Perspectives
Since a number of breast cancer survivors has recently been growing, multidisciplinary treatment teams should be able to provide a comprehensive care, focused on each individual patient clinical characteristics, needs and goals, as well as on current medical standards, to balance both the anticancer and cardiac therapies.
Katarzyna Rygiel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cardiotoxic effects of radiotherapy and strategies to reduce them in patients with breast cancer: An overview, Journal of Cancer Research and Therapeutics, January 2017, Medknow,
DOI: 10.4103/0973-1482.187303.
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