ecancermedicalscience

Case Report

Long QT syndrome and torsade de pointes after anthracycline chemotherapy

8 Jun 2009
N Colombo, D Cardinale, G Lamantia, A Colombo, G De Giacomi, C Cipolla, M Civelli

Anthracycline chemotherapy, which represents the treatment of choice for many hematologic and metastatic cancers, unfortunately carries with it the possibility of both early cardiotoxic phenomena, occuring during chemotherapy, and also late cardiotoxic manifestations, occuring even months or years from the completion of treatment.

The clinical manifestations of early cardiotoxicity commonly include: ventricular premature beats, supraventricular tachycardia, cardiomyopathy and sudden death.

This study confirms the necessity for close cardiac monitoring of patients undergoing anthracycline therapy. Such monitoring should not only comprise echocardiographic monitoring for left ventricular systo-diastolic dysfunction, but also electrocardiographic monitoring (QTc) in order to exclude electrophysiological changes possibly related to life threatening arrhythmias (10).

Related Articles

Ademola Oluwatosin Oyekan, Omolara Aminat Fatiregun, Muhammad Habeebu, Ifeanyichukwu Augustine Onyeodi, Adebayo Deborah Adeoluwa
Oluwaseyi K Idowu, Adewumi O Alabi, Ibijoke A Idowu, Opeyemi I Olusunmade, Bright A Igbinoba, Abdulwahab Ajani, Mohammed Y M Habeebu, Jane U Igwilo, Kolawole O Aramide, Eyitayo O Alabi, Fatimah B Abdulkareem, Samuel U Eyesan, Suleiman O Giwa
Francis Okongo, Catherine Amuge, Alfred Jatho, Nixon Niyonzima, David Martin Ogwang, Jackson Orem
Ankita Chitre, Akhil Kapoor, Bipinesh Sansar, Anuj Gupta, Praveen Lakshmanamurthy, Somnath Dey, Kunal Vinayak, Ajit Sahoo, Navneet Kaur, Sumaiya Azeem, Dipti Kadu, Akash Anand Shrivastav
Misbah Younus Soomro, Saqib Raza Khan, Hashim Ishfaq, Insia Ali, Mirza Rameez Samar, Arif Hameed, Nawazish Zehra, Munira Moosajee, Yasmin Abdul Rashid
Ghazal Tansir, Sameer Rastogi, Ekta Dhamija, Shamim Ahmed Shamim, Deepali Jain, Adarsh Barwad, Sunil Kumar, Rambha Pandey