Cardiac risk after mediastinal irradiation for Hodgkin's disease
Introduction
In patients with HD, several published studies show a significant association between mediastinal Rt and an increased risk of coronary artery disease 4, 10, 12, 26, 27, 29as well as with some other cardiac lesions (e.g. pericardial effusion and fibrosis, valvular lesions, atrophy and fibrosis of the myocardium) 2, 8, 9, 11, 13, 21, 40, 42, 43, 47. However, in an important part of these studies, patients treated with older treatment techniques are included. Long-term data analyzing the cardiac risk after modern treatment techniques and a possible association with other known risk factors are relatively sparse. Therefore, we analyzed the incidence of cardiac lesions in our own patients, treated since 1964. A preliminary report of our analysis was published in 1994 [18]. A special interest of the following analysis was also the question of a progression of the valvular lesions and what routine tests should be recommended for the follow-up.
Section snippets
Selection of patients for analysis
In 1964, megavoltage Rt with mantle technique with a dose per fraction between 1.5 and 2.0 Gy and a total dose lower than 46 Gy was introduced at our institution for the treatment of patients with HD. In 1989, a special heart examination was introduced for all patients attending regular follow-up at our department after mediastinal Rt since 1964 and for all new patients also before Rt.
Since 1964, 451 patients with HD have been registered in our department; 55 patients had only palliative
Fatal ischemic events in the total group
The incidence of fatal cardiac events in the total group is given in Table 3. In the total group of 352 patients, eight patients died due to a myocardial infarction. Five patients died suddenly without preceding illness. The observed number of these events was significantly higher than expected.
Analysis of subgroups showed that in female patients the risk of fatal myocardial infarction was not significantly different from the expected value. Mean and median values of age and of the length of
Ischemic heart diseases
After mediastinal irradiation with or without chemotherapy with partial inclusion of the heart and applying intermediate total doses between 30 and 45 Gy with doses per fraction between 1.5 and 2.1 Gy, a significant increase of the risk of ischemic heart diseases was observed. After grouping our patients into subgroups according to important cardiovascular risk factors, a significantly increased risk was observed in patients with known risk factors but not in patients without such factors even
Conclusions
(1) In patients without cardiovascular risk factors, the radiation associated risk of ischemic cardiac disease after irradiation of the mediastine using standard fractionation and intermediate total doses seems low. (2) A relatively frequent finding is a thickening of the aortic and/or mitral valves, mostly of a minor degree and without significant disturbance of the valvular function. Follow-up examination of these patients shows a slight increase of the lesions but mostly without reaching
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