Cardiac Consequences for Breast Cancer Survivors Treated with Trastuzumab

It is well known that cardiac toxicity is a potential adverse effect among breast cancer patients receiving anthracyclines and HER2-directed therapy such as trastuzumab. What is less clear are the long-term cardiac complications for breast cancer survivors who received such therapy in the past.

Now, investigators have conducted a single-center, cross-sectional, case-control study of 42 survivors of HER2-positive, early-stage breast cancer who completed adjuvant trastuzumab therapy a median of 7 years earlier; of these, 38 had received anthracycline-based chemotherapy prior to trastuzumab. Half of all patients had evidence of cardiac toxicity, defined as an asymptomatic drop in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), and half had no eviden…