Onkológia 1/2020

Efficacy and cardiotoxicity risk of adjuvant treatment in HER2-positive patients with breast cancer

Breast cancer is one of the world‘s most common malignant diseases in women. It accounts for about 30% of all cancers. HER2-positive breast cancers represent about 20% to 30% of all breast cancers. They have more aggressive behaviour with higher mitotic activity and increased invasiveness, which leads to earlier and more frequent relapses. Improvement in overal survival by 20% to 30% is achieved by adding a targeted antiHER2 treatment, trastuzumab to systemic treatment. Systemic adjuvant chemotherapy of HER2-positive breast cancer consists of combined regimens based on anthracycline, taxane amd trastuzumab. Pertuzumab demonstrated efficacy in adjuvant treatment of breast cancer, as well. When deciding about the most optimal therapy, one needs to take into account not only the improvement in overall survival, but risk of cardiotoxicity as well, and especially in the patients with pre-existing cardiac disease.

Keywords: cardiotoxicity, pertuzumab, trastuzumab, imaging methods, HER2-positive breast cancer