An evaluation of the cardiotoxicity of imatinib mesylate

Antonio Luiz Ribeiro1, Milena Soriano Marcolino, Henrique N S Bittencourt

  • 1School of Medicine, Hospital das Clínicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. tom@hc.ufmg.br

Leukemia Research
|May 23, 2008
PubMed

We studied 103 consecutive patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia on treatment with imatinib (IM) and 57 patients with chronic myeloproliferative disorders not treated with IM in order to evaluate its cardiotoxicity. There was no statistical difference regarding cardiac symptoms and signs, BNP levels and echocardiographic measurements for IM and control groups, except for peripheral oedema, more frequent in the IM group. Four patients in the IM group presented a BNP level >100pg/ml, one of them with depressed LVEF. IM was not related to systematic deterioration of cardiac function, but there is still a possibility of isolated cases of cardiotoxicity.