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Detection of Cardiac Toxicity Due to Cancer Treatment: Role of Cardiac MRI

  • Cardio-oncology (S Francis, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

Common cancer treatments including anthracycline-based chemotherapy, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and thoracic radiation therapy can result in short- and long-term cardiovascular complications with a significant impact on morbidity and mortality. Anthracycline-based chemotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors are associated with left ventricular systolic dysfunction and heart failure. Radiation therapy is associated with restrictive cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, as well as pericardial and valvular disease. The current standard surveillance of oncology patients for cardiotoxicity involves echocardiography, radionuclide cardiac blood pool imaging, and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. CMR can be used to evaluate ventricular structure and function, which is important for management decisions to prevent further cardiac injury. In patients for whom standard surveillance imaging demonstrates a drop in systolic function with or without symptoms, the use of CMR is an appropriate next step for further evaluation due to the accuracy and reproducibility of measurements of function and volumes combined with the additive information provided by tissue characterization through imaging of myocardial edema and myocardial fibrosis, although the clinical applications of these latter are as yet unclear. Overall, detection of early cardiotoxicity is important since therapeutic response is improved with prompt initiation of medical treatment.

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Conflict of Interest

Nandini (Nina) M. Meyersohn, Amit Pursnani, and Tomas G. Neilan each declare no potential conflicts of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Cardiac MR PET CT Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Nandini (Nina) M. Meyersohn MD, Amit Pursnani MD & Tomas G. Neilan MD

  2. Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Cardio-Oncology Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Amit Pursnani MD & Tomas G. Neilan MD

Authors
  1. Nandini (Nina) M. Meyersohn MD
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  2. Amit Pursnani MD
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  3. Tomas G. Neilan MD
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Correspondence to Nandini (Nina) M. Meyersohn MD.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Cardio-oncology

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Meyersohn, N.(.M., Pursnani, A. & Neilan, T.G. Detection of Cardiac Toxicity Due to Cancer Treatment: Role of Cardiac MRI. Curr Treat Options Cardio Med 17, 38 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-015-0396-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-015-0396-8

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