Radiation-induced heart disease.

A 45-year old woman underwent a radical mastectomy in 1965 for carcinoma of the left breast with metastasis in the left axillar lymph nodes. Fifty per cent of the heart received 4,000 rads during post-operative X-ray therapy. Patient developed radiopneumonia and symptoms of acute pericarditis in 1967. Constrictive pericarditis developed gradually from 1972 on. A pericardiectomy was performed in June 1974 and a thickened pericardium could be removed. Light and electron microscopic examination of a surgical biopsy of the left ventricular epi-myocardium revealed epicardial fibrosis, interstitial fibrosis of the myocardium and perivascular fibrosis. The diagnosis of post-radiation pericarditis was made. The myocardial involvement may be responsible for the subsequent clinical course.