Between Scylla and Charybdis: long-term cardiovascular complications after radiotherapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma

Abstract

Radiotherapy, an established treatment for local and regional control in neoplastic disease, may have several acute, subacute and chronic side effects. One of the main concerns about mediastinal radiotherapy is the occurrence of long-term cardiovascular complications after oncological treatment. This is an important issue--especially for thoracic neoplasms with long-term survival, such as breast cancer or Hodgkin's lymphoma--because of the increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. We present the case of a 50-year-old woman who developed several cardiovascular complications of radiotherapy more than 10 years after the successful treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma, underlining the particular problems related to optimal therapeutic options in this population.