Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital have used artificial intelligence tools to accelerate the understanding of the risk of specific cardiac arrhythmias when various parts of the heart are exposed to different thresholds of radiation as part of a treatment plan for lung cancer. Their results are in . "Radiation exposure to the heart during treatment can have very serious and immediate effects on a patient's cardiovascular health," said corresponding author Raymond Mak, MD, of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"We are hoping to inform not only oncologists and cardiologists, but also patients receiving , about the risks to the heart when treating lung cancer tumors with radiation." The emergence of artificial intelligence tools in health care has been groundbreaking and has the potential to positively reshape the continuum of care, including informing treatment plans for patients with cancer. For patients receiving to treat (NSCLC), arrhythmias or irregular rhythms of the heart can be common.
Because of the close proximity of the heart to the lungs and with NSCLC tumors being near or around the heart, the heart can receive from radiation dose spillage meant to target the cancer tumors. Prior studies have found that this type of exposure to the heart is associated with general cardiac issues. However, this nuanced study demonstrated that the risk for different types of arrhythmias can vary significantly based on the pathophysiology an.