Echocardiography is a useful tool to identify and document early warning signs of adverse effects from the chemotherapy drug trastuzumab on the hearts of cancer patients, according to a study presented at Euroecho, held 7-10 December in Budapest.
Cardiotoxicity from chemotherapy treatments can be acute. Chemotherapy drugs that cause this toxicity are anthracyclines and related compounds, capecitabine, and trastuzumab.
In the first study, 51 consecutive women receiving treatment with trastuzumab for breast cancer at the Santa Cruz Hospital/ São Francisco Xavier Hospital in Lisbon between May and September 2010 participated in a study to identify early warning signs of adverse cardiac effects.
Dr. Helder Dores and colleagues found that no patients showed overt signs of heart failure or significant left ventricular systolic function deterioration within the first 90 days following treatment. However, almost one-fifth of the patients developed impaired ventricular relaxation.
A second study described how Doppler echocardiography was used to investigate whether an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor and a statin might confer a cardioprotective effect on patients treated with anthracyclines for a range of malignancies.
Dr. Liliana Radulescu of the Municipal Hospital in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, investigated the effect of the ACE inhibitor lisinopril and the statin rosuvastatin to protect cardio function. Twenty-six patients treated with the anthracycline epirubicin were given 10 mg of lisinopril and 10 mg of rosuvastatin. A control group of gender- and age-matched patients received the anthracycline only. The control group showed further deterioration of left ventricle diastolic function.
