TUESDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Breast cancer patients who receive irradiation to their left side are more likely to develop heart disease in the ensuing two decades than their counterparts who receive right-side irradiation, according to a study published online Aug. 14 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Eleanor E.R. Harris, M.D., now with the Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Fla., and colleagues found that 25 percent of women who received radiation on their left side developed coronary artery disease, compared with 10 percent of those who were irradiated on the right. Fifteen percent of women with left irradiation had a myocardial infarction, compared with 5 percent of others. A history of hypertension increased these risks in left-sided patients. The rate of death from a cardiac cause was 6.4 percent for the left-sided group versus 3.6 percent for the right-sided group at the 20-year mark.
Until there is a consensus, "I use 1.8-Gy daily fractions for all patients with left-sided cancers, hoping (without proof) that the smaller fraction size will reduce the risks of cardiac disease, and alternative radiation therapy positioning and newer treatment techniques in selected patients," writes Abram Recht, M.D., of Harvard Medical School in Boston, in an editorial.
Harris was affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia when she conducted the study.
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