Cardiologists Draw Attention to Cardiac Side Effects of Oncology Regimens

When it comes to discussing the cardiotoxicity of cancer pharmacotherapies, it often seems that oncologists and cardiologists are on different planets.

“You will see wildly different toxicity numbers…1 trial will report 3% cardiotoxicity; another studying the same regimen will report 30%. It’s usually because they’re using vastly different definitions of toxicity,” Dr. Ronald M. Witteles said at the annual meeting of the Heart Failure Society of America.

“The typical clinical trial definition of a cardiac event in a cancer treatment trial is new symptomatic NYHA class III or IV heart failure or cardiac death; that’s it,” added Dr. Witteles, a cardiologist at Stanford (Calif.) University.

The consensus within the emerging field of cardio-oncology is that that simply isn’t good enough. A reasonable definition of cancer treatment—related cardiotoxicity must be far broader, encompassing a drop in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of greater than 10% from normal-range pretreatment to below the threshold of normal, regardless of whether that decline is accompanied by symptoms, as well as the development of an acute coronary syndrome or symptomatic arrhythmia, according to Dr. Daniel J. Lenihan, president of the International Cardioncology Society, an organization devoted to closer collaboration between the two medical specialties.

Original article on The Oncology Report: http://bit.ly/1wfRn1h