Cardiovascular Risk and Level of Statin Use Among Women With Breast Cancer in a Cardio-Oncology Clinic

Kelly Shum; Amber Solivan; Parham Parto; Nichole Polin; Eiman Jahangir

Cardiovascular Risk and Level of Statin Use Among Women With Breast Cancer in a Cardio-Oncology Clinic

Ochsner J. 2016 Fall;16(3):217-24.

Authors

Kelly Shum¹, Amber Solivan², Parham Parto³, Nichole Polin¹, Eiman Jahangir¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Cardiology, Ochsner Clinic Foundation, New Orleans, LA ; The University of Queensland School of Medicine, Ochsner Clinical School, New Orleans, LA.
² Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA.
³ Department of Cardiology, Ochsner Clinic Foundation, New Orleans, LA.

PMID: 27660568
PMCID: PMC5024801

Abstract

Background: Because of the improvements in survival rates, patients with breast cancer are now more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than from cancer. Thus, providing appropriate preventive cardiovascular care to patients with cancer is of the utmost importance.

Methods: We retrospectively compared the cardiovascular risk and management of 146 women treated at the Cardio-Oncology (Cardio-Onc) and the Obstetrics and Gynecology (Ob-Gyn) clinics. We calculated cardiovascular risk using the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk calculator and the Framingham Risk Score Calculator. We also determined the prevalence of appropriate statin use according to both the 2013 ACC/AHA and the 2002 Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) III lipid guidelines.

Results: The 10-year ASCVD risk score was not significantly different between the 2 cohorts. More patients in the Ob-Gyn cohort with an ASCVD risk score >7.5% were already appropriately on statins compared to patients in the Cardio-Onc cohort (60.9% vs 31.0%, respectively, P=0.003), but after the first Cardio-Onc visit, 4 additional patients with breast cancer were prescribed statins (44.8% total). Fourteen (19.2%) Cardio-Onc patients had a high Framingham Risk Score compared to 6 (8.2%) Ob-Gyn patients.

Conclusion: We demonstrated that the ASCVD risk is similar between women with breast cancer attending the Cardio-Onc clinic and the women without breast cancer attending the Ob-Gyn clinic, but the Cardio-Onc cohort had significantly more patients with a high Framingham Risk Score. Both clinics had similarly poor rates of appropriate statin prescribing rates according to the ATP III guidelines.

Keywords: Atherosclerosis; breast neoplasms; cardiotoxicity; cardiovascular diseases; hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase inhibitors; risk assessment.