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Breast cancer radiotherapy and cardiac risk

  • Review
  • Published:
Oncology Reviews

Abstract

Breast cancer is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women in the developed world and its incidence in the developing world is on the rise. Management of breast cancer requires a multimodality approach and an integration of the services of surgery, radiation, and medical oncology. Radiotherapy after mastectomy or breast conservation leads to reduction in local recurrence by two-thirds. Recent trials and metaanalyses have also demonstrated overall survival benefit with radiotherapy. Of late, however, there has been concern regarding side effects of radiotherapy in breast cancer. Among these the cardiac risk has been particularly been of concern. This review discusses the etiology, manifestations, and evidence in relation to implication of breast cancer radiotherapy in cardiac adverse effects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Anusheel Munshi & Debanarayan Dutta

  2. Kokilaben Ambani Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Kaustav Talapatra

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  1. Anusheel Munshi
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  2. Kaustav Talapatra
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  3. Debanarayan Dutta
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Correspondence to Anusheel Munshi.

Additional information

Search strategy: The search engines used for the review were Pubmed, Google and Yahoo. Published data for this review were identified by systematically searching all trials, review articles and metaanalyses between 1960 and 2009 in the PubMed-MedLine restricted to the English language from 1980 till date with the following Me dical S ubject H eading (MeSH) terms: “breast cancer”; “radiotherapy”; “cardiac risk” using BOOLEAN search algorithms.

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Munshi, A., Talapatra, K. & Dutta, D. Breast cancer radiotherapy and cardiac risk. Oncol Rev 4, 137–146 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12156-010-0041-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12156-010-0041-4

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