Breast Cancer Radiation Has Long-Term Heart Effects: Study...

But expert states cancer-fighting benefits outweigh heart-disease risks WebMD Media from HealthDay By Kathleen Doheny HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, March 13 (HealthDay News) -- Radiation treatment for breast cancer, granted after breast-conserving surgery and often after mastectomy, is known to cut back the danger of the cancer returning and death from the disease. However the treatment is sold with its risk. The therapy has been found to improve the probability of developing heart disease later, through accidental radiation contact with the heart. In a fresh study, experts considered the degree of this threat. "For the vast majority of my people, I could reassure them concerning the threat to the heart," said Dr. Carolyn Taylor, an expert medical oncologist at the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford, in England. "This is demonstrating that, for the great majority of women, the advantages of breast cancer radiation outweigh the dangers [to the heart]," Taylor said. The study is revealed in the March 14 issue of the Brand New England Journal of Medicine. The study did not, nevertheless, look at all kinds of heart problems linked with radiation therapy, nor did it contemplate chemotherapy, which also has been linked with heart problems later, explained Dr. Javid Moslehi, who wrote an article accompanying the study. Girls should be aware of each one of these cardiovascular disease risks after radiation therapy to the chest, said Moslehi, director of the cardio-oncology plan at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. For the analysis, Taylor's group examined a lot more than 2,100 women who'd radiation treatment for breast cancer in Sweden and Denmark between 1958 and 2001. As the comparison group they evaluated nearly 1,000 women with significant heart events and more than 1,200 women who did not have heart events and served. Main heart events examined included heart attack, the need to unblock or change blocked blood vessels to the heart, or death from ischemic heart disease (by which there is a decreased blood supply to the heart). The higher the radiation dose, the higher the danger of these heart problems. "This study shows for initially that whilst the radiation dose to the heart increases, so does the risk of radiation-induced heart disease," Taylor said. Lately, Taylor said, improvements in radiation products have made it possible to deliver radiation more properly so the heart receives less coverage. Taylor examined each woman's average amount of radiation to the center. The general average was 4.9 items, or grays. Women with cancer in the left breast -- which is nearer to the heart -- averaged more heart publicity (6.6 grays). Today, Taylor said, the average general ranges from 2 grays to 10 grays. The rate of heart issues increased by 7.4 percent per gray. No beginning limit was found.

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