The Cardio-Oncology Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital assists patients in managing heart-related side effects from cancer treatments and pre-existing heart diseases. The program evaluates heart health before any cancer treatments or surgeries. The program started because certain cancer treatments, such as anthracyclines and Herceptin for breast cancer, can unexpectedly harm the heart. Many other treatments such as chemotherapies, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy agents can also affect the heart.
The difficulty when dealing with these kinds of side effects is that they can often mask themselves as normal effects from cancer treatment, such as fatigue and shortness of breath, and often there may not be any symptoms initially. If it is determined that a patient has a pre-existing heart dysfunction, our experienced providers can help make decisions of how treatment can be optimized, and establish what the baseline function is for continued monitoring. If a patient is found to have cardio-toxicities during treatment with chemotherapy, the oncologist, the patient, and the Cardio- Oncology Program will work together to decide what the best course of action is.
Giving a patient as much information as possible about their treatment plan and what to expect is crucial. The goal of the Cardio-Oncology Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital is to provide specialty care for patients who have cancer to help them not only deal with the effects of their chemotherapy on their heart, but also to evaluate patients with co-existing cardiac disease and cancer for specialized therapy where there may be increased risk to the heart. With new cancer therapeutic agents being developed, people are living much longer lives and a healthy heart is crucial to being able to enjoy that.
Clonal hematopoiesis is 2-fold more common in cancer patients and has been independently associated with increased risk of heart disease, heart failure, and immunotherapy related myocarditis. If you’d like to be evaluated for clonal hematopoiesis, please make an appointment with Dr. Kwan.
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