Long-term follow-up of cardiac function in patients with Hodgkin's disease treated with mediastinal irradiation and combination chemotherapy including doxorubicin.

Among 41 evaluable patients whose first treatment for advanced Hodgkin's disease had consisted of alternating cycles of mechlorethamine, vincristine, prednisone, and procarbazine (MOPP), and doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (ABVD), in addition to low-dose mediastinal irradiation, 19 underwent retrospective cardiac evaluation by routine posteroanterior and lateral chest x-ray, 12-lead ECG, M-mode echocardiogram, and ECG-gated left ventricular blood pool scan at rest and during exercise. Fifteen patients had unequivocally normal left ventricular function by all these parameters. Two patients had minimally reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) at rest with a normal increment with exercise. In two other patients with high normal resting LVEF and subnormal increment with exercise, the elevated resting values implied initial measurement in a nonbasal state. A twentieth patient (the oldest; one of two with active Hodgkin's disease at the time of evaluation and the stimulus for this study) had markedly reduced LVEF as determined by radionuclide cardiac angiography and had developed clinical congestive heart failure shortly before evaluation. Despite this patient, the study indicates that treatment with MOPP/ABVD and low-dose mediastinal irradiation entails low risk for cardiac complications.