Radiation Therapy for Breast Cancer not Good for Heart

Exposure to even low doses of radiation during breast cancer treatment can increase the risks of heart disease, new research released Wednesday.

Efforts to find out the risks associated with radiotherapy have been going on from a long time and there is no solid data available to prove the link between radiotherapy after breast cancer and heart disease.  For analysing the hidden risks associated with radiotherapy, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford included more than 2,000 female breast cancer patients from Denmark and Sweden.

Findings of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found radiotherapy for breast cancer having a negative impact on heart health.

During radiotherapy the heart also gets accidentally exposed to some radiation, authors  while explaining the occurrence, said. The heart risk becomes specifically high when the left breast is affected with cancer and when the lymph nodes inside the chest gets exposed.

However, according to the authors, the risk is very small.

"We carried out this work because doctors could not reliably estimate the risk of heart disease in women treated with radiotherapy for breast cancer.  Doctors can now estimate the risk and know that in most cases it will be very small so that they can reassure their patients.  In addition, the few women for whom radiotherapy poses undue risk can now be identified, so that alternative techniques can be considered," author of the study, Sarah Darby said in a news release issued by Cancer Research, UK.

Researchers expect their findings to help doctors spread awareness among women undergoing breast cancer treatment and predicting their risks of heart disease by measuring the amount of radiation exposure during the treatment.

"Already our work is being used in cancer centres throughout the world and we've heard it's making a difference to patients. It's important to remember that for most women treated today the benefits of breast cancer radiotherapy far outweigh the risks," Dr Carolyn Taylor, who was part of the study, said.

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths among women in the U.S. According to a latest estimate from the American Cancer Society, nearly 232,340 women are affected with invasive breast cancer and nearly 39,620 women die from breast cancer across the country.