Electrocardiogram is very useful for predicting acute heart failure following myeloablative chemotherapy with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation rescue.

A prospective study was conducted in 71 evaluable patients who received myeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) at our facility from 1995 to 2002, to find a sensitive marker for post-transplant heart failure, including echocardiographic systolic and diastolic markers and QTc interval. QTc was found to be an independent and significant risk factor for acute heart failure (AHF) on multivariate logistic regression analysis (OR 1.5, P=0.01, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.1-2.0), while no significant differences between patients with AHF and those without AHF were found in age, sex, treatment history, type of conditioning regimen, and echocardiographic systolic and diastolic markers. On further analysis, post-transplant risk of AHF appeared to be increased as QTc was prolonged. The post-transplant risk of AHF in the group with longest QTc on multivariate logistic regression analysis was found to be 9.8 times that in the group with shortest QTc (P=0.04, 95% CI 1.0-100). These results suggest that echocardiographic markers are less valuable predictors of post-transplant AHF, but that prolongation of the QTc, an ECG marker, before HSCT is strongly associated with onset of AHF after HSCT.