Skip to main content

COSOSA

Heart disease and breast cancer

Heart disease and breast cancer Dr YT Singh explains that heart disease is the reason why breast cancer patients due to receive cardiotoxic therapy need a cardiovascular assessment before, during and after cancer treatment.

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. There is a one-in-eight chance of women being diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.

Happily, due to excellent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, breast cancer patients are being cured in 90% of cases.

However, breast cancer is not the main cause of death in women, cardiovascular disease (heart disease) is.

And to make it a double whammy, the drugs used to treat breast cancer just happen to be cardiotoxic in many instances;

that is, they may cause heart problems…