Longitudinal Changes in Echocardiographic Parameters of Cardiac Function in Pediatric Cancer Survivors

Background: Childhood cancer survivors undergo serial echocardiograms to screen for cardiotoxicity. It is not clear whether small longitudinal changes in functional or structural parameters over time have clinical significance.

Objectives: To assess the timing of changes in serial echocardiographic parameters in pediatric age childhood cancer survivors and to evaluate their associations with cardiomyopathy development.

Methods: We performed a multi-center retrospective case-control study of ≥1-year survivors following the end of cancer therapy. Cardiomyopathy cases (fractional shortening (FS) ≤28% or ejection fraction (EF) ≤50% on ≥2 occasions) were matched to controls (FS ≥30%, EF ≥55%, not on cardiac medications) by cumulative anthracycline and chest radiation dose, follow-up duration, and age at diagnosis. Digitally archived clinical surveillance echocardiograms were quantified in a central core lab, blinded to patient characteristics. Using mixed models with interaction terms between time and case status, we estimated the least square mean differences of 2D, M-mode, pulsed wave Doppler and tissue Doppler imaging derived parameters across time between cases and controls.

Results: We identified 50 matched case-control pairs from 5 centers. Analysis of 412 echocardiograms (cases, n=181; controls, n=231) determined that indices of LV systolic function (FS, biplane EF), diastolic function (mitral E/A ratio), and LV size (end diastolic dimension z-scores) were significantly different between cases and controls, even four years prior to the development of cardiomyopathy.

Conclusions: Longitudinal changes in cardiac functional parameters can occur relatively early in pediatric age childhood cancer survivors and are associated with the development of cardiomyopathy.