Study of Myocardial Function by Speckle Tracking After Cancer Treatment With Anthracyclines in Childhood

Anthracyclines are major drugs in the treatment of childhood cancers. The main factor limiting their use is the occurrence of delayed cardiac toxicity, irreversible, in an dilated form of potentially fatal cardiomyopathy. This delayed cardiotoxicity secondary to the destruction of myocardial cells is histologically proven after administration of the first dose of anthracyclines. The main known risks factors for delayed cardiotoxicity are: the cumulative dose of anthracyclines, young age at the time of administration, and association with mediastinal radiotherapy. All pediatric protocols with anthracyclines therefore provide a prolonged cardiac monitoring.

However, there are no validated predictive early markers of progression to cardiomyopathy:

i) the standard echocardiography, routine surveillance method does not detect subclinical myocardial injury,

ii) the predictive value of biomarkers (ultrasensitive troponin, NT-pro-BNP) is controversial because of conflicting results.

Among the echocardiographic innovative techniques, myocardial strain imaging by speckle tracking echocardiography analyses via a software myocardial displacement of natural acoustic markers, and enables rapid evaluation, precise and objective of the segmental and global myocardial function, expressed as a percentage (strain) and speed of myocardial deformation (strain rate) by reference segment and by reference dimension (longitudinal, radial, circumferential).