The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) and the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) have released a consensus statement recommending the use of echocardiography in cancer patients.
In a paper published in the September issue of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography, a team led by Dr. Juan Carlos Plana of the Cleveland Clinic said that echocardiography should be the modern method of choice for evaluating the heart health of patients before, during, and after cancer therapy.
The researchers strongly recommended that all patients undergoing cancer therapy should receive an early baseline echocardiogram. The article also includes recommendations for follow-up intervals specific to each form of therapy being employed (JASE, Vol. 27:9, pp. 911-939).
In addition, the paper discusses the utility of echocardiography tools such as 3D echocardiography, myocardial deformation or "strain" imaging, contrast echocardiography, and stress echocardiography. In a statement, Plana said 3D echo is the preferred choice for monitoring cardiotoxicity.
"But even when 3D echo is not possible, 2D echo still provides excellent information to the clinician and allows for early detection of any cardiac issues, which is the most important consideration," he said.
Early detection of cardiac dysfunction could lead to prescriptions of cardioprotective medications or, if necessary, treatment modifications, according to the authors.
![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
