Cardiac Toxicity after Matched Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation in the Post-Transplant Cyclophosphamide Era.

Graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) is one of the leading causes of non-relapse mortality (NRM) following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT). Post-transplant cyclophosphamide (PTCy) has shown promise in managing GVHD. However, cyclophosphamide has known cardiac toxicities and few studies have evaluated the cardiac toxicities that arise following PTCy. Here, we completed a retrospective analysis of matched alloHCT patients at our institution who received PTCy or non-PTCy-based GVHD prophylaxis, with the goal of determining the incidence of cardiac toxicities up to 100 days after alloHCT. We included 585 patients in our analysis and found that 38 patients (6.5%) experienced cardiac toxicities after alloHCT. The toxicities observed included arrhythmias (n=21), heart failure (n=14), pericardial effusions (n=10), and myocardial infarction or ischemia (n=7). Patients who received PTCy had a 7.4% incidence of cardiac toxicities, while non-PTCy patients had an incidence of 5.8% (p=0.4). We found that age > 55 years (p=0.02), history of hypertension (p=0.01), arrhythmia (p=0.003), diabetes (p=0.04), and cardiac comorbidities (p<0.001) were significant predictors of cardiac toxicity, while none of the preparative and GVHD prophylaxis regimens used were predictive of cardiac toxicity. From these findings, we proposed the use of a Cardiac Risk Stratification Score to quantify the risk of cardiac toxicity following alloHCT and found that a higher score correlated with cardiac toxicity incidence. Furthermore, the development of cardiac toxicity was associated with worse 1-yr overall survival (OS) and NRM while the use of PTCy was associated with improvements in 1-year OS and NRM rates.