BARCELONA — Cardiovascular disease risk factors, as well as established disease, in patients undergoing cancer therapy can be safely managed to minimize cancer therapy-related cardiovascular toxicity (CVR-CVT), conclude the first cardio-oncology guidelines from the European Society of Cardiology.
The guidelines were presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2022 on August 27, and published simultaneously in the European Heart Journal.
Guideline cochair Alexander R. Lyon, MD, PhD, told theheart.org| Medscape Cardiology that the aim of the guideline was to “personalize the decision-making of a patient with cancer who has cardiovascular disease or is at risk of developing it from their treatment…because it’s not one size fits all.”
A “very strong theme throughout the guideline is risk assessment, and the fact that that risk is dynamic, it can change…because how you manage someone who’s at high risk is going to be different,” to someone who is at moderate or low risk, he said.
“We’re doing a lot of surveillance because one of the big advantages of cardio-oncology is we know when someone is about to get treated,” Lyon, from the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, and Cardio-Oncology Service, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, said.