With the ever-increasing incidence of cancer in society and continued emergence of novel therapies pushing the survival curve in a positive direction, it remains as important as ever to sustain our patients through their treatment journey by protecting them from the adverse effects of their therapy. Cancer and cardiovascular disease are the most prevalent diseases in the developed world. Evidence increasingly shows these conditions to be interlinked and are connected biologically through detrimental effects of anticancer treatment on cardiovascular health.
Anti-cancer therapies can cause a wide spectrum of short and long term cardiotoxic effects. An explosion of novel cancer therapies has revolutionised this field and dramatically altered cancer prognosis. Nevertheless, these new therapies have introduced unexpected cardiovascular complications beyond heart failure(1).
This presentation will focus on the common and emerging cardiovascular toxicities seen with cancer therapy in 2020 and how, as health care professionals, we have a critical role to play in sustaining our patients through their cancer journey by monitoring, preventing and treating cardiac toxicities which can occur during (and after) treatment.