Radiation?induced heart damage (RIHD) is unavoidable in the mediastinal heart during radiotherapy for chest and abdominal tumors. This condition has been considered to be important in conventional radiation?induced pulmonary fibrosis. It is a severe side effect of radiotherapy. In recent years, research on RIHD has gradually increased in intensity. At present, many clinical observations are being undertaken in this field, but the basic research is insufficient, the etiological mechanism is not clear, and there is a lack of effective intervention. Therefore, there is an urgent need to carry out animal experiments as basic research on RIHD, to explore the pathomolecular mechanisms of cardiac injury induced by radiation and to actively develop potential intervention measures. This paper reviews the result of basic research on RIHD in terms of animal modeling, index detection, pathological mechanism, drug intervention, and pharmacological action in order to provide a reference for future RIHD research.