The ESC’s Cardio-Oncology 2025 conference will focus on addressing the growing need for integrated cardiovascular care in cancer treatment.
Summary: The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is launching its first cardio-oncology conference in 2025 to address the growing intersection of cancer treatment and cardiovascular health. With the aging population and increasing cancer diagnoses, more patients are experiencing cardiovascular side effects from cancer treatments. The conference will focus on preventing, diagnosing, and managing these side effects, and experts will share strategies to improve outcomes for cancer patients. ESC’s efforts also include publishing guidelines and collaborating on clinical trials to advance cardio-oncology care.
Key Takeaways:
- Growing Need for Cardio-Oncology: The ESC is launching a conference to focus on the rising cardiovascular side effects from cancer treatments as the cancer patient population increases.
- ESC Guidelines and Research: ESC has developed guidelines for managing cancer therapy-related heart conditions and is collaborating on trials to prevent cardiotoxicity.
- Global Focus on Heart Health in Cancer Care: The ESC conference will provide a global platform for experts to address the critical need for cardiovascular care in cancer patients to improve treatment outcomes and prevent complications.
The news of a cancer diagnosis understandably makes doctors and patients focus on the cancer itself. However, experts in cardio-oncology from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) emphasize that heart and cardiovascular health must be included as early as possible in the patient’s cancer treatment plan to ensure the best possible outcomes.
Due to an aging population and a growing number of cancer diagnoses, there is also an increasing number of patients with cardiovascular side effects of cancer treatment. To tackle this growing problem, the ESC is launching a new conference on cardio-oncology to specifically target this increasingly important area that overlaps cancer treatment and its associated cardiovascular disease (CVD) side effects.
ESC Cardio-Oncology 2025 will take place in Florence, Italy, from June 20-21, 2025.
Escalating Risks and Emerging Solutions
Previous research from prospective registries published in the European Heart Journal estimates that approximately one-third (32%) of patients experience mild toxicities that could potentially progress in severity without adequate monitoring, while 3% develop moderate toxicity and a further 3% the most severe toxicity.
“The main goal of this emerging specialty of cardio-oncology is to reduce the burden of CVD in cancer patients allowing them to receive the best anti-cancer therapy (chemotherapy, targeted molecular therapies, hormone therapy, immunotherapy or radiotherapy) with the lowest rate of side effects and treatment interruptions,” says Teresa López-Fernandez, MD, University Hospital La Paz – Madrid, Spain, and co-chair of the ESC Cardio-Oncology Guidelines Task Force, in a release.
[Why Some Cancer Treatments Boost Risk of Heart Disease]
Alexander Lyon, MD, PhD, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK, and also co-chair of the ESC Cardio-Oncology Guidelines Task Force, adds in a release, “We could soon be facing cardio-oncology ‘epidemic’ due to either the growing population of cancer survivors, the increasing number of patients aged over 65 who need chronic cancer therapy and the high frequency of cancer-therapy induced CVDs in these populations.”
Concerns about the increasing prevalence of cardiotoxicity caused by cancer therapies led to the ESC establishing, in 2018, the Council of Cardio-Oncology as a multidisciplinary constituent body that encourages the prevention, early diagnosis, and management of cancer therapy-related CVD. Today, the council brings together over 2,000 members worldwide and a team of volunteers as part of the Council of Cardio-Oncology Board.
Guidelines for Cardio-Oncology
In 2022, the Guidelines Taskforce, led by López-Fernandez and Lyon, published the first ESC clinical practice guidelines on cardio-oncology. These guidelines include advice on how to conduct an assessment of cardiovascular toxicity risk, in collaboration with the cardio-oncology team, using specific risk scores; the implementation of preventive strategies in high-risk patients; and analysis of methods to monitor cancer treatments with advanced cardiac imaging techniques (including MRI and strain) and biomarkers.
They also include techniques for early management of potential cardiac toxicities, aiming to maintain cancer treatment whenever cardiac toxicity is manageable and the patient remains stable, and also advice on carrying out long-term follow-up of cancer survivors who have received treatments with potential late cardiovascular effects.
“Cardio-oncology teams design effective ‘shields’ to protect the hearts of oncology patients,” says López-Fernandez in a release. “The teamwork between cardiologists and cancer specialists promotes the prevention of cardiovascular diseases in cancer survivors.”
The guidelines provide explanations of cancer therapy-related CV toxicity and various examples of this, including cardiac dysfunction, arrhythmias, hypertension (arterial and pulmonary), and thrombosis. If cardiac dysfunction is detected, cardiology and oncology teams are strongly recommended to discuss the pros and cons of continuing versus stopping cancer treatment.
“Our mission is always to ensure that cancer patients have the best and most effective cancer treatment safely, and to prevent interruptions in their cancer treatment due to cardiovascular problems which could have been prevented,” says Lyons in a release.
Special Considerations
Populations needing special considerations, including children and adolescents and pregnant women with cancer, are also all addressed in the guidelines. “As the global population grows older, we will see more and more people with cancer and thus more and more with toxic CVD side-effects of cancer treatment,” says López-Fernandez in a release.
Lyon adds, “This specialized area of medicine is one that is only going to grow, and as such we and other experts at the European Society of Cardiology believe the time has come to have a global forum, in the form of our first ever ESC Cardio-Oncology conference, to gather global experts to ensure better outcomes for this growing patient group.”
The council is currently collaborating in the RESILIENCE trial, a randomized controlled trial focused on exploring novel strategies to prevent anthracycline cardiotoxicity. At ESC Cardio-Oncology 2025, the council will host a dedicated session with the RESILIENCE team.
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