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CV mortality rates in breast cancer similar to general population
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The incidence of CV mortality was not elevated in women who survived breast cancer, including women who were HER-2-positive, compared with the general population, according to a study published in the European Heart Journal.
“We consider the result of our study to be very positive for the treatment of breast cancer,” Hermann Brenner, MD, of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, said in a press release. “It is particularly good news for the large number of affected patients that if they are in good medical care and have survived breast cancer, they do not need to be more worried about deadly heart diseases than women at the same age without breast cancer.”
Janick Weberpals, PharmD, a PhD student in the division of clinical epidemiology and aging research at the German Cancer Research Center, and colleagues analyzed data from 501,547 women (mean age, 60 years) from 18 regional cancer registries in the U.S. who had a primary malignant breast cancer diagnosis between 2000 and 2011. Of those women, 69.3% received chemotherapy, radiotherapy or both. Individuals from the WONDER online database were used as the reference cohort.
Women were followed up from the time of diagnosis to date of last contact, death or end of the study period on Dec. 31, 2014.
During a median follow-up of 8.4 years, women who were treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy were more likely to die of breast cancer compared with women with breast cancer not treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy (11.5% vs. 9.5%). However, women treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy were less likely to die of CV-related causes than women who did not receive either treatment (2.1% vs. 6.4%).
Women who were treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy had a lower risk for heart-specific mortality vs. the general population (overall standardized mortality ratio = 0.84; 95% CI, 0.79-0.9).
Compared with women who were HER-2-negative, those who were positive for the receptor did not have an increased risk for CV-related mortality (cause-specific HR = 0.96; 95% CI, 0.7-1.32).
“This might add knowledge for further development of cardio-oncological risk stratification among breast cancer patients and help clinicians to make informed decisions about which patient strata are at highest risk and who would benefit most from preventive actions,” Weberpals and colleagues wrote. – by Darlene Dobkowski
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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