Coronary vasomotor dysfunction in cancer survivors treated with thoracic irradiation

We sought to test the hypothesis that thoracic radiation therapy (RT) is associated with impaired myocardial flow reserve (MFR), a measure of coronary vasomotor dysfunction. We retrospectively studied thirty-five consecutive patients (71% female, mean ± standard deviation (SD) age: 66 ± 11 years) referred clinically for positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) myocardial perfusion imaging at a median (interquartile range, IQR) interval of 4.3 (2.1, 9.7) years following RT for a variety of malignancies. Radiation dose-volume histograms were generated for the heart and coronary arteries for each patient. The median (IQR) of mean cardiac radiation doses was 12.0 (1.2, 24.2) Gray. There were significant inverse correlations between mean radiation dose and global MFR (MFRGlobal) and MFR in the left anterior descending artery territory (MFRLAD): Pearson’s correlation coefficient = − .37 (P = .03) and − .38 (P = .03), respectively. For every one Gray increase in mean cardiac radiation dose, there was a mean ± standard error decrease of .02 ± .01 in MFRGlobal (P = .04) and MFRLAD (P = .03) after adjustment. In patients with a history of RT clinically referred for cardiac stress PET, we found an inverse correlation between mean cardiac radiation dose and coronary vasomotor function.