[Correspondence] Radiotherapy for breast cancer, the TARGIT-A trial

Javant Vaidya and colleagues report an increased risk of non-breast cancer deaths with external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) compared with intraoperative radiotherapy, highlighting the difference in cardiac events in the two treatment groups. Although the log-rank statistics show a significant difference in non-breast cancer deaths in the EBRT group, these deaths included stroke, bowel ischaemia, and other events unrelated to breast irradiation. Therefore, the number of cardiac events are small, and to suggest that the risk of cardiac death differs between EBRT and intraoperative radiotherapy would be premature.
Source: LANCET - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research