Electrocardiographic findings of palonosetron in cancer patients

Nausea and vomiting are among the major problems occurring during and after the chemotherapy treatments of cancer patients. The recently developed 5-HT(3) antagonists have proved much more effective than former agents. Several studies have shown that these agents cause certain ECG changes. We aimed to evaluate the ECG changes caused by palonosetron, one of the new 5-HT(3) antagonists.

Our study includes a total of 50 patients diagnosed with solid-organ tumors receiving chemotherapy. The patients were applied 12-lead ECG before palonosetron infusion. Afterwards, subsequent ECGs were applied on the 30th, 60th, and 90th minutes following the infusion of palonosetron. Arterial blood pressure was measured before and after the infusion. PR, QRS, QT, QTmax, QTmin, QTd, Pmax, Pmin, Pd, QTc, QTcmax, QTcmin, and QTcd values were evaluated for each ECG.

We did not detect significant correlations between the systolic and diastolic blood pressures before and after (30 min) palonosetron infusion (p > 0.05). However, there was a statistically significant decrease in heart rate (p = 0.000). The evaluation of ECG findings revealed that there was a significant prolongation in PR distance, as shown by the comparisons of 0 min with 30, 60, and 90 min. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in QRS, QT, QTmax, QTmin, QTd, Pmax, Pmin, Pd, QTc, QTcmax, QTcmin, and QTcd values (p > 0.05).

In this study, we revealed that palonosetron did not cause any severe rhythmic disorders or symptomatic ECG changes. We concluded that it could be safe to administer palonosetron antiemetically.