Risk of cardiovascular disease in women with and without breast cancer

Many breast cancer (BC) treatments confer risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), but risks by exposure to certain BC treatments alone or in specific combinations have not been well quantified. The prospective Pathways Heart Study at Kaiser Permanente Northern California compared risk of incident CVD events and death in 13,642 women with BC diagnosed from 2005 to 2013 who received chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or endocrine therapy with 68,202 women without BC. Compared with age and race/ethnicity matched controls without BC, women who received anthracyclines and/or trastuzumab, radiation therapy,or aromatase inhibitors had increased risk of developing heart failure/cardiomyopathy, stroke, arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, and venous thromboembolic disease, and of experiencing a CVD-related or all-cause death.