Does focusing LVEF monitoring on the first 6 months improve cost-effectiveness without compromising safety in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer treated with trastuzumab?
Real-world data suggests that LVEF monitoring for trastuzumab-induced cardiotoxicity could be safely focused on the first 6 months of treatment to improve cost-effectiveness.
Knowledge of when cardiotoxicity occurs in daily practice will help shape the best follow-up method for cardiac monitoring in trastuzumab-treated patients with human epidermal growth receptor 2-positive early breast cancer. In the first years after implementation of trastuzumab for treatment of early breast cancer, physicians frequently based their decision to discontinue treatment on patient symptoms apart from left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) outcome. When cardiotoxicity was found in daily practice, it occurred mainly in the first 6 months after start of trastuzumab. This study suggests that focusing LVEF monitoring on the first 6 months might be more cost-effective without compromising patient safety. This insight stresses the relevance of performing real-world analyses.
Seferina et al. (Wed,) studied this question.