[Comparative evaluation of the cardiotoxic effects of antineoplastic antibiotics adriamycin and pharmorubicin]

Thirty patients with Grade III breast cancer, a locally common form, were examined to compare the magnitude of the cardiotoxic effects displayed by the antitumor anthracyclic antibiotics adriamycin (15 patients) and pharmorubicin (15 patients). Clinical symptoms of cardiotoxicity developed in 13.3% of the pharmorubicin-treated and in 40% of the adriamycin-treated patients. Among the noninvasive techniques, electrocardiography turned out to be more informative, which enabled the signs of myocardial dystrophy and cardiac arrhythmias to be identified in 20 and 40% on pharmorubicin and adriamycin, respectively. Poly- and echocardiography proved to be less informative than it was shown by the data available in the literature, which is associated with the use of relatively small total doses of anthracycline in our investigations.