The Actual Role of Nuclear Molecular Imaging in the Follow-up of Chemotherapy-Induced Cardiac Dysfunction

The increase in life expectancy due to the increase in cancer treatment success has made the follow-up of the acute, short and long-term cardiac side effects of chemotherapeutic drugs more important today. Although chemotherapy-induced cardiac dysfunction is one of the major problems, there is still a need for an accurate and readily available non-invasive monitoring technique. In the present article, we tried to evaluate past and present nuclear molecular imaging techniques from the perspective of chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity monitoring. Today neither nuclear imaging methods nor other techniques are sufficiently accurate/readily available to use in clinical routine to show cardiotoxic effects of chemotherapeutics at an early stage. However, nuclear molecular imaging can detect biological processes at the molecular level that precede the structural changes and pathological consequences of chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity. Until today, many molecules to use with a conventional gamma camera or positron emission tomography have been tried for this clinic pathology. Many of them have been shown to have prognostic value in the early stages of the disease, but relatively in small patient groups. However, sometimes due to difficulty in procuring, the lack of comparative studies seems to prevent their value from coming to light. There is a need for additional studies to clarify the role of nuclear imaging of cardiac damage in chemotherapy-induced carditoxicity.