Cardiovascular mortality after radiotherapy for breast cancer

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7396.983

BMJ 2003;326:983 ( 3 May )

Letters

Cardiovascular mortality after radiotherapy for breast cancer

Study showed only estimates of use of adjuvant radiotherapy

Article showed nothing new

Study showed only estimates of use of adjuvant radiotherapy

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ The headline on the BMJ 's front cover "Cardiovascular mortality after radiotherapy for breast cancer" would lead thereader to suppose that the study described the relation betweenadjuvant irradiation for breast cancer and cardiac mortality.¹The actual report of a cohort of nearly 90 000 women reportedfrom the Swedish cancer registry with data on laterality of breastcancer and cardiac mortality presents only estimates of the useof adjuvant radiotherapy (30%) from regional Swedish registriesin the 1970s and1980s.

Darby et al are rightly modest in their claims about the increased mortality ratio (left v right) of 1.10 because of the wideconfidence intervals for the observed ratio. This study, likethe meta-analyses of trials of postoperative locoregional irradiationfor early breast cancer, treats radiotherapy as a uniform intervention.This takes no account of the volume of heart irradiated, pre-existingcardiac morbidity, dose and fractionation, or the . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

StumbleUpon Add to Technorati

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Article

Research pointers: Mortality from cardiovascular disease more than 10 years after radiotherapy for breast cancer: nationwide cohort study of 90 000 Swedish women: Sarah Darby, Paul McGale, Richard Peto, Fredrik Granath, Per Hall, and Anders Ekbom
BMJ 2003 326: 256-257. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]