medwireNews: The American Heart Association (AHA) has released a consensus statement on the management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in patients receiving hormonal therapies for breast or prostate cancer.
The authors review the available data on CV risks and outcomes of endocrine therapy and androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and provide guidance for risk assessment, monitoring, prevention, and management of CVD in patients receiving these therapies.
They also outline key areas of future research, such as evaluating the effects of different durations of hormone therapies on CVD risk and defining and identifying “the optimal method of CVD and cardiovascular risk factor identification and screening” in these patients.
Commenting on this guidance, Kathleen Zhang (Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA), the lead author of a recent study evaluating CV adverse events in prostate cancer patients receiving ADT, told medwireNews that “it’s exciting that the [CV] community is starting to pay more attention to the issue of [CV] outcomes in prostate cancer patients.”
She continued: “The AHA consensus statement is important to have in the literature, to maintain a consistent standard for clinical practice. However, it’s important to remember that these recommendations represent expert opinion only.”
Noting that many unanswered questions remain, such as the role of baseline risk factors and the efficacy of CV therapies in these patients, Zhang concluded: “I think there is a lot of interest and enthusiasm for answering these types of questions, so we should hopefully be able to provide a stronger evidence base for clinical recommendations in the near future.”
The consensus statement, developed by a multidisciplinary group of experts, is published in Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine.
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