Cardiac complications of cancer treatment

The treatment of cancer may include chemotherapy, immunologic therapy, radiation therapy, surgical resection, or a mixture of several of these modalities. Each of these treatment modalities may have cardiac complications that may be important to patient management by the anesthesiologist. Very frequently, multimodality cancer therapy may have surgical resection as a subsequent rather than initial step in treatment; therefore, the anesthesiologist must be aware of and prepared to deal with the potential cardiac complications from each of the treatment modalities mentioned. This article discusses the potential cardiac impairment caused by chemotherapy, immunologic therapy, and radation therapy.