Cardiotoxicity associated with Cancer Chemotherapy

Based on the World Health Organization (WHO) report, in many of the countries, cancer was the first or second most cause for death before 70 years of the age. Nowadays cancer treatment employs better prognosis by attaining improvement in treatment modalities including radiotherapy & systemic therapies to prolong the life of the cancer patient. However in long term survivors frequent cause and important adverse reaction (ADR) of cancer chemotherapy was cardiotoxicity. Thus cancer chemotherapy has complicated by the development of cardiotoxicity such as left ventricular dysfunction/heart failure, hypertension, thromboembolism, ischemia, bradycardia. Cardiovascular damage caused by the cancer treatment may be the result of accelerated atherosclerosis due to cancer chemotherapy related to cardiovascular risk factors or of damage caused by the treatment itself. Cardiotoxicity can develop in 3 stages such as sub acute, acute and chronic. These effects can occur during the treatment or many years after the completion of the treatment as a result of undiagnosed or subclinical dysfunction. During chemotherapy cardiac dysfunction and the susceptibility of patients to develop cardiotoxicity, mechanisms are scare. To find the long term cardiovascular side effects followed by cancer therapy, clinical trials studies were going nowadays even though a clear mechanism of cardiotoxicity associated to cancer medications was lacking. The aim of the review is to summarize the range of cardiovascular side effects and the possible mechanism of cardiotoxicity associated with each chemotherapeutics agents.