Heart problems after childhood cancer?

The pioneering CardioOnco study, which began in 2016 at the University of Bern and investigates the effects of childhood cancer therapy on heart health in adulthood, has now been extended to the hospitals in Basel, St Gallen, Lucerne and Geneva. Here, former childhood cancer patients have the opportunity to go to a new heart consultation. In addition to the usual heart ultrasound, they can be examined with a new, possibly more accurate heart ultrasound technique called "speckle tracking". You can also take part in a cardiovascular stress test.

“We intend to use the medical findings to see how often heart problems occur and which patient groups are particularly affected. We hope that the speckle tracking examination will enable us to detect heart problems at an early stage in the future and thus prevent later effects of cancer therapy such as cardiac muscle weakness,” says paediatric oncologist Dr. Christina Schindera, who heads up the CardioOnco study at the Universities of Bern and Basel together with Professor Dr. Nicolas von der Weid and Dr. Tomas Slama. To date, more than 400 former childhood cancer patients have had the medical. It is financed by the Basel Region Childhood Cancer Foundation (Regio Basiliensis), Cancer Research Switzerland and the University of Basel.

Any adults who are interested in taking part in the study or would like to know more about it, should get in touch with the CardioOnco study team by e-mail: christina.schindera@ispm.unibe.ch and tomas.slama@ispm.unibe.ch