something women don't want to hear
breast cancer battling cancer can
already take a toll on someone's life
emotionally and physically but now
there's a study that shows that breast
cancer patients might have an increased
risk of cardiovascular diseases
including heart failure and one doctor
says the result should not scare
patients when it comes to making
decisions on their treatments though
joining us this morning is dr. amber
patel a cardiologist with st. Vincent's
and we say treatment because that is the
link it's not actually just because you
have breast cancer you could have heart
problems it's the actual treatment that
you go through that's correct so it's
very important to realize there's a
distinction women who have breast cancer
who actually are survivors and they're
going through the treatment they have an
independent risk of having heart disease
irrespective of their age and the other
risk factors which traditionally
contribute to heart disease like bad
cholesterol and diabetes so it's the
treatment options especially
chemotherapy radiation those kind of
things that women had goes through can
potentially cause heart disease how
likely is it that I mean what are the
cases that you're seeing so you know it
is estimated about 50 million American
women are there who have heart disease
in the nation about 3 million breast
cancer survivor' patients are there so
the prevalence is still up and
unfortunately what happens is the same
risk factors that both of these
populations share aren't exactly the
same so it's the traditional risk
factors which is inactivity yeah bad
cholesterol having not been able to take
care of themselves because of the
overweight those are the women who
actually have increased risk of having
breast cancer and the same patient
population also has an increased risk of
having heart disease so how does the
treatment effect that though so the
chemotherapy agents not all but some of
them who are designed to have it helped
with the breast cancer actually could
potentially cause weakening of the heart
muscle and eventually lead to a
condition called congestive heart
failure so not only the chemotherapy
options but also radiation especially
women who had had breast cancer on their
left side of the breast that can also
radiation can also lead to radiation
induced heart
disease and it affects not just the
heart muscles but it also can affect the
arteries causing blockages eventually
heart attacks and also it rid me of the
heart and also the valves which is all
very under kind of represented in the
women population so if you have a women
where the breast cancer and has gone
through chemotherapy agent eventually
develops signs and symptoms of
congestive heart failure she may
potentially have heart disease including
all these things all these areas so
should a woman not get this kind of
treatment I mean should it kind of like
decide if they go through radiation or
absolutely not absolutely not so I think
it's very important to realize that yes
not all of these patients who go through
breast cancer treatment develop heart
disease there is a little increased risk
but by no means this fact should deter
them away from having treatment for
breast communiy if you need radiation
for breast cancer you need radiation for
breast cancer what we do is conjunction
with the oncologist we come up with a
treatment plan typically what we do is a
lot of surveillance especially routine
echocardiography which is ultrasound of
the heart before during and after
treatment to monitor effects and side
effects of the chemo therapeutic or
radiation treatments okay so you can see
if it's starting to yes so I had Ellie
and at any point when we see that there
is some sort of quote-unquote damage to
the heart muscle or any other areas of
the heart we start instituting
management for those therapies in
conjunction with the breast cancer
treatment very seldomly we would tell
our oncologist not to give the treatment
most of the time the treatment goes
forward with some addition or
subtractions depending on what the heart
health is doing so in short very
important to take care of the breast
health at the same time take care of the
heart health
make sure to definitely watch for that
heart help afterward even after your
survivor and it's all clear that's a
large check absolutely it during the
treatment phase there's a risk but now
we have a lot of data and we have
gathered over the last 20 years because
the breast cancer survivors are living
20 25 30 years that there's latent
effects of having chemotherapy agents 20
years ago and now they're developing
heart disease absolutely thank you so
much for coming on and telling us about
that