The impact of modern radiotherapy on long-term cardiac sequelae in breast cancer survivor: a focus on deep inspiration breath-hold (DIBH) technique

Introduction One of the most feared side effects of radiotherapy (RT) in the setting of breast cancer (BC) patients is cardiac toxicity. This side effect can jeopardize the quality of life (QoL) of long-term survivors. The impact of modern techniques of RT such as deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH) have dramatically changed this setting. We report and discuss the results of the literature overview of this paper. Materials and methods Literature references were obtained with a PubMed query, hand searching, and clinicaltrials.gov. Results We reported and discussed the toxicity of RT and the improvements due to the modern techniques in the setting of BC patients. Conclusions BC patients often have a long life expectancy, thus the RT should aim at limiting toxicities and at the same time maintaining the same high cure rates. Further studies are needed to evaluate the risk-benefit ratio to identify patients at higher risk and to tailor the treatment choices.