2023 Volume 41 Issue 2 Pages 227-234
Objective: We investigated the importance of routine cardiac function assessments in patients with doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity.
Methods: We studied patients who received doxorubicin plus cisplatin therapy as postoperative adjuvant therapy for endometrial cancer. Echocardiography was performed for routine assessment of cardiac function before initiation of doxorubicin + cisplatin therapy, after 3 cycles, after all cycles, and 6 months after the end of treatment. We retrospectively compared the triggers for diagnosis of cardiotoxicity and ejection fraction changes in patients diagnosed with cardiotoxicity before and after introduction of routine assessments.
Results: Cardiotoxicity was diagnosed in 7/144 (4.9%) of the pre-introduction group and 8/57 (14.0%) of the post-introduction group. The number of asymptomatic cardiotoxicity cases diagnosed from decreased ejection fraction by echocardiography was 2/7 (28.6%) in the pre-introduction group, significantly lower than 7/8 (87.5%) in the post-introduction group (p=0.041). Median ejection fractions after treatment for cardiotoxicity were 38%in the pre-introduction group and 54%in the post-induction group, being significantly higher in the post-induction group (p=0.028).
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that introduction of routine assessments may reduce the number of severe cardiac dysfunction cases due to an increase in asymptomatic diagnosed cases.
