Fighting cancer without losing heart

How UHN's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre transforms outcomes for those with cardiac issues caused by cancerCanada's top disease killers

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In early April of 2020, Lori Chen felt a lump in her breast while she was in the shower. The Toronto-based pharmacist was 36 years old and had a two-and-a-half-year-old son, and it was early in the pandemic, when much of the world was in lockdown. She cried for days.

Lori decided to focus on her family and the things that were within her control. She started chemotherapy, underwent a mastectomy and began to feel that her life would soon return to some semblance of normal. That was until an echocardiogram in October 2020 revealed that she was in imminent danger of heart failure.

Lori, who had no symptoms of heart disease, says this new diagnosis was even scarier than discovering she had breast cancer.

"When I thought of heart failure, I pictured my grandmother who had swollen ankles and trouble walking up stairs. I didn't have anything like that. I was in shock." She had always known that her cancer treatment could affect her heart, but now she was facing the reality of that risk.

A toll on the heart

Cancer treatment-related cardiotoxicity is damage to the cardiovascular system caused by otherwise life-saving approaches to combat the disease. "Surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy-all of these are related to some form of cardiovascular toxicity," says Dr. Dinesh Thavendiranathan, an international expert in the field of cardio-oncology and part of the team that cared for Lori at UHN's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre in Toronto, home to the largest cardiotoxicity clinical program in Canada.