Cancer Treatments: Patients Need To Know Heart Risks

Recent research on the health risks that people undergoing cancer treatment face warns that there is a lack of awareness about the risks that some of these therapies can pose to heart health

Islamabad (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / Online –  May, 2019) Recent research on the health risks that people undergoing cancer treatment face warns that there is a lack of awareness about the risks that some of these therapies can pose to heart health.At the same time, the new research shows that most of these people have limited or no knowledge about the cardiovascular risks because their doctors never tell them.The authors recently presented their findings at EuroHeartCare 2019, a congress of the European Society of Cardiology, which took place at the start of May in Milan, Italy.”Depending on the type of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, between 1% and 25% [of] cancer patients may develop heart failure due to cancer treatment,” warns study author Prof.

Robyn Clark.”Risk,” she adds, “also depends on cardiovascular risk factors, such as smoking and obesity. Better monitoring of the heart and intervention before, during, and after treatment can prevent or lessen the impact of this cardiotoxicity.”Cancer patients unaware of risksThe study authors explain that people who experience heart problems following cancer treatment may not do so immediately.In fact, according to research investigating heart failure risk in people who have undergone cancer treatment, therapy-related heart failure can develop up to 20 years after the treatment has concluded.In the current study, the researchers looked at the medical records of 46 people who had received cancer treatment at one of three hospitals between 1979 and 2015.

All of these people had cardiotoxicity (damage to the heart muscle), and the research team selected them at random.

The investigators found that of these 46 patients, only 11% had received a referral to a specialized cardiologist before beginning chemotherapy, and medical professionals had only referred 48% of them to a heart failure clinic following their treatment.Prof.

Clark and colleagues also note that among the individuals whose records they studied, about 40% were overweight or had obesity, 41% had smoked or were still smoking, 24% used alcohol regularly, 48% had high blood pressure, and 26% lived with diabetes.Patients miss crucial self-care informationThe researchers then looked at the provision of care received by subsets of cancer patients during two different periods: 1994-2011 and 2012-2015.

They selected these dates so that they could look at the effect of the publication of the European Society for Medical Oncology’s Clinical Practice Guidelines, which appeared for the first time in 2012.When they compared the provision of care in the two periods, the investigators found that the rate of appropriate heart care did actually increase.The percentage of people who received a referral to a cardiologist before starting chemotherapy went from 0% to 23%, while the percentage of patients receiving a baseline echocardiogram a scan that allows doctors to assess heart function rose from 57% to 77%.Moreover, the researchers went on to interview 11 cancer patients, of whom seven also belonged to the randomly selected group of 46 people whose medical records the investigators initially analyzed