How to avoid heart problems after cancer treatment in children? Management and surveillance of different classes of anti-cancer drugs used.
The world’s first international clinical guidelines to help prevent and treat heart complications in children undergoing cancer treatment have been created. The guidelines are published in JACC: Advances. The guidelines cover cardiovascular disease assessment, screening, and follow-up, for children receiving cancer treatment with new molecular therapies, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy.
‘Heart disease assessment, screening, and follow-up for children receiving cancer treatment are included in the new guidelines.’
The high-risk group of cancer patients who should undergo a heart check-up standardized an approach to screening and surveillance during treatment and provided recommendations to protect vulnerable young hearts.World's First Guidelines Created to Prevent Heart Problems in Children Fighting Cancer
While international guidelines to monitor poor heart side effects during therapy exist for adult patients, none were specific to children.In addition to this, the success of new cancer drugs has increased the chances of cardiac side effects that occur early on during therapy, sometimes within days, which warranted closer heart health surveillance and earlier monitoring.
Recent advances in treating childhood cancer have resulted in survival rates of more than 80 percent. However, improving serious health outcomes in survivors remains an essential focus and prevention is key.
Heart complications are a leading cause of death for childhood cancer survivors, second only to cancer relapse. Modern treatments including precision medicine have broadened the agents that can cause heart problems.
Childhood cancer survivors are 15 times more likely to have heart failure and eight times more likely to have heart disease than the general population. Hence, this new guideline would be an indispensable tool for clinicians to significantly reduce the harmful impact of cancer drugs on children’s hearts.
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