Echocardiography and Cardio-Oncology

Abstract

Owing to the ongoing increase in cancer survivors because of the remarkable and continuous progress in cancer management, a paradigm shift is occurring from cancer as a 'terminal illness' to a 'chronic condition' with cardiovascular risks. This also affects cardiology practice with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality rates among patients with cancer due to direct and/or indirect side effects of anticancer treatment. Thus, cardio-oncology has emerged as a new cardiology subspecialty, which focusses on risk stratification, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of cardiovascular disease related to cancer treatment. This review summarises echocardiographic evaluation of cardiac dysfunction and heart failure as they are the most concerning cardiovascular complications of cancer therapy and worsen its morbidity and mortality. This review covers cardiac function assessment and proposed cut-off values before/during/after cancer chemotherapy. The goal of this review is to aid clinicians to manage the patients with cancer sufficiently by connecting the existing knowledge in clinical cardiology with novel information from current advances in cardio-oncology.

Keywords: Anthracycline; Cancer therapy-related cardiac dysfunction; Cardiotoxicity; Ejection fraction; Myocardial strain; Trastuzumab.