Key clinical point: Patients with left-sided breast cancer (BC) who received radiation doses to the left anterior descending artery (LAD) experienced an elevated risk for adverse cardiac outcomes.
Major finding: Mean dose to LAD was associated with an increased risk for any cardiac event (hazard ratio [HR] 1.09; P = .006) and major cardiac events (HR 1.08; P = .022). Receiver operating characteristics analysis identified 2.8 Gy (area under the curve 0.69) as the mean LAD dose threshold, above which the risk for any cardiac event was higher ( P = .001).
Study details: Findings are from a retrospective study of 375 consecutively treated female patients with nonmetastatic, left-sided BC who received breast-conserving surgery/mastectomy and adjuvant radiation therapy.
Disclosures: This study did not receive any funding. The authors declared no conflict of interests.
Source: Zureick AH et al. Dose to the left anterior descending artery correlates with cardiac events following irradiation for breast cancer. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2022 (Apr 24). Doi: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2022.04.019