Recent studies have demonstrated an increased risks of cardiac disease in breast cancer radiotherapy patients. For patients diagnosed \<50 years old, the risks for cardiovascular diseases/events were increased by 24-82% comparing left and right breast radiotherapy. The deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH) technique addresses this problem by reducing the heart dose by up to half, thus potentially reducing the increased rate of major coronary events by 20%. Providing patients with visual feedback in addition to audio guidance has been demonstrated to improve the reproducibility of the DIBH technique by 95% and stability by 80%.
Breathe Well is a new audiovisual feedback device that may increase the accuracy and workflow of implementing DIBH for breast cancer patients.
