Optimising screening for the cardiotoxic effects of cancer therapy
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Direct comparison of the accuracy and reproducibility of MUGA, CMR and echocardiography for cardiac function assessment in oncology patients at risk of cardiotoxicity.
IRAS ID
200038
Contact name
Charlotte Manisty
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Barts Health NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Cancer is a major worldwide health problem, with around 330.000 new annual cases only in the UK. Fortunately, advances in treatment have resulted in improved survival rates. But when one problem is solved, another arises – many survivors are now suffering cardiac complications of their cancer therapy.
Some chemotherapy treatments (particularly anthracyclines and Trastuzumab) have well known toxic effects on the heart.It is important that these harmful effects are picked up at an early stage in order to initiate cardiac treatments and prevent further deterioration, and if necessary to stop the harmful cancer treatments. For this reason, patients undergo serial cardiac imaging assessments before, during, and after chemotherapy. There is currently no defined process for cardiac screening, with multiple pathways used across our Trust and Nationally. The three most commonly used imaging techniques are nuclear scans (MUGA), echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR)
To date, there is no head-to-head comparison of the accuracy and reproducibility of all these three modalities performed with no temporal gap between them.
Since both decisions about chemotherapy treatment and the need for early treatment of cardiac problems are based on the results of these exams, measurements have to be extremely accurate and reproducible to avoid the error of stopping chemotherapy due to changes in cardiac function that are only due to variability on repeat testing rather than a real new function impairment.
To help solve this lack of evidence and improve the diagnostic screening for our oncologic patients, we will perform a multi-imaging study, where CMR, echocardiography and MUGA departments at Barts Heart Centre, will work together to assess the reproducibility of the 3 screening methods. Whether a technique outperforms others, would clearly improve our cardio-oncology practice
REC name
London - Hampstead Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/1815
Date of REC Opinion
29 Sep 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion