Heart risk rises with breast cancer radiation

By Gene Emery NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The radiation that might cure a breast cancer may also raise a woman’s risk of having a heart attack or heart disease later in life, according a new study that looked back at the cases of 2,168 women in Sweden and Denmark. The risk “begins within a few years after exposure, and continues for at least 20 years,” the researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. And that risk rises, they found, in proportion to the dose of radiation the heart receives. …