Comment: Teratogens and the Delaney Clause

Objective: We sought to evaluate the impact of different antineoplastic treatment methods on systolic and diastolic myocardial function, and the feasibility estimation of regional deformation parameters with non-Doppler 2D echocardiography in rats. Background: The optimal method for quantitative assessment of global and regional ventricular function in rats and the impact of complex oncological multimodal therapy on leftand right-ventricular function in rats remains unclear. Methods: 90 rats after subperitoneal implantation of syngenetic colonic carcinoma cells underwent different onclogical treatment methods and were diveded into one control group and five treatment groups (with 15 rats in each group): group 1 = control group (without operation and without medication), group 2 = operation group without additional therapy, group 3 = combination of operation and photodynamic therapy, group 4 = operation in combination with hyperthermic intraoperative peritoneal chemotherapy with mitomycine, and group 5 = operation in combination with hyperthermic intraoperative peritoneal chemotherapy with gemcitabine, group 6 = operation in combination with taurolidin i.p. instillation. Echocardiographic examination with estimation of wall thickness, diameters, left ventricular fractional shortening, ejection fraction, early and late diastolic transmitral and myocardial velocities, radial and circumferential strain were performed 3–4 days after therapy. Results: There was an increase of LVEDD and LVESD in all groups after the follow-up period (P = 0.0037). Other LV dimensions, FS and EF as well as diastolic mitral filling parameters measured by echocardiography were not significantly affected by the different treatments. Values for right ventricular dimensions and function remained unchanged, whereas circumferential 2D strain of the inferior wall was slightly, but significantly reduced under the treatment (-18.1 ± 2.5 before and -16.2 ± 2.9 % after treatment; P = 0.001) without differences between the single treatment groups. Conclusion: It is feasible to assess dimensions, global function, and regional contractility with echocardiography in rats under different oncological therapy. The deformation was decreased under overall treatment without influence by one specific therapy. Therefore, deformation assessment with non-Doppler 2D strain echocardiography is more sensitive than conventional echocardiography for assessing myocardial dysfunction in rats under oncological treatment. Published: 12 July 2007 Cardiovascular Ultrasound 2007, 5:23 doi:10.1186/1476-7120-5-23 Received: 5 June 2007 Accepted: 12 July 2007 This article is available from: http://www.cardiovascularultrasound.com/content/5/1/23 © 2007 Hartmann et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.