Surgical treatment of doxorubicin-induced heart failure

Doxorubicin-induced heart failure is a rare, but serious illness and is well-known to be difficult to treat. Prevention strategies have not demonstrated the expected success and unfortunately, this specific type of heart failure does not respond to the usual medical therapies as do other kinds of heart failure. Therefore, surgical procedures may be necessary in some patients. Cardiac transplantation is performed in most cases but this requires cure of the neoplastic disease. This usually requires a recurrence-free interval of several years which is associated with a high attrition rate in these patients due to their cardiac disease. Therefore, ventricular assist devices may be implanted in selected patients as a bridge to transplantation or destination therapy. This review focuses on the surgical options for doxorubicin-induced heart failure and discusses their efficacy as well as their clinical applicability.