Study: Heart Risks Low For Breast Cancer Radiation

WASHINGTON -- Women receiving radiation for breast cancer may no longer face an increased risk of potentially deadly heart damage from the treatment, according to a new study.

More than 40 percent of women with breast cancer undergo radiation following surgery.

Studies in the 1970s indicated that radiation therapy for breast cancer also exposed the heart to radiation and increased the woman's long-term risk of dying from cardiac disease.

But in a report in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers from the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said improvements in radiation therapy appear to have sharply reduced the heart risk.

"For a while now, physicians have been telling women that receiving radiation for breast cancer is so much safer today than it was before," said study leader Dr. Sharon Giordano in a news release. "People believed it, but there really was very little scientific evidence or studies examining the relationship between advancements in radiation therapy to ischemic heart disease."

The researchers analyzed data from 1973 to 1989 on 27,283 women -- 13,998 had left-sided breast cancer, 13,285 had right-sided breast cancer. They found that heart risks declined steadily over the time period.

"Heart complications associated with radiation treatment really became appreciated in the 1980s, leading to improvements in technique and delivery," said Dr. Thomas Buchholz, one of the study's researchers. "Receiving radiation will only become safer and safer for patients as we move forward, with newer radiation techniques allowing treatment to exclusively target tumors, while sparing healthy tissue."

The risk of heart problems is still slightly higher among women being treated for cancer in their left breast because it's located near the heart.