Local heart irradiation and adriamycin both cause significant functional and morphological cardiac damage in a rat model, with combined treatment further decreasing capillary density.
Does not support practice change; leaves open whether rat cardiotoxicity from irradiation plus adriamycin extends to patients.
The hearts of Wistar rats were locally irradiated with 15–30 Gy single doses of 300 kV X‐rays or animals were intravenously injected by single doses of 1–3 mg/kg body weight of adriamycin. Animals were followed until death or for between 320 and 710 days. After irradiation, congestive heart failure occurred with a dose‐dependent latency, which was significantly longer if the atria were excluded from the irradiation field. Cardiac output started to decrease after about 3 months, well before myocardial degeneration was noted, but it did not depend on radiation dose. After adriamycin, cardiac output showed a dose‐dependent drop within 2 weeks to plateau and never recovered to the control values. Capillary density 400 days after treatment was reduced both after irradiation and after adriamycin. Irradiation with 20 Gy 6 months after adriamycin decreased capillary density even further.
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Kitahara et al. (1993) studied this question.
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