Cardiac complications of chemotherapy: role of prevention.

With recent novel therapies, cancer survival has improved and chemotherapy-induced cardiac toxicity including left ventricular dysfunction and heart failure has a greater potential impact on long-term outcomes. Hence, the prevention of cardiotoxicity should be an important objective when planning the therapy of cancer patients. Different pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic approaches have been shown to be effective in small trials, most of them in patients treated with anthracyclines.