The UK HeartSpare study

Recent evidence suggests that the risk of major coronary events after breast radiotherapy is linearly related to mean radiation dose received by the heart and that there is no threshold dose below which this risk is nullified. In addition, these effects are visible within the first four years after radiotherapy, much earlier than had previously been recognised.

With numbers of breast cancer survivors increasing as a result of improvements in diagnosis and treatment, minimising the radiation dose received by the heart is one of the main priorities in current breast radiotherapy practice. However, breast radiotherapy is also one of the main users of UK radiotherapy time, accounting for approximately 30% of all radiotherapy treatments. As such, the challenge is to find effective solutions which will minimise the impact on radiotherapy resources, both financial and temporal.

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