Risk of transfusion-related iron overload varies based on oncologic diagnosis and associated treatment: Retrospective...

Transfusion-related iron overload (TRIO) is a widely acknowledged late effect of antineoplastic therapy in pediatric cancer survivors, but firm guidelines as to screening protocols or at-risk populations are lacking in the literature.

We performed retrospective analysis of all oncology patients diagnosed at our center from 2014 to 2019, who underwent TRIO screening as part of an internal quality improvement project. Correlations of MRI-confirmed TRIO with patient-, disease-, and treatment-specific features were evaluated.

We show that a tiered screening algorithm for TRIO, when followed as intended, led to the identification of the highest proportion of patients with TRIO. We confirm that cardiac TRIO is quite rare in the oncology patient population. However, accepted surrogate markers including red blood cell transfused volume and ferritin only modestly correlated with TRIO in our patient cohort. Instead, we found that older age, leukemia diagnosis, anthracycline exposure, and receipt of stem cell transplant were most strongly associated with risk for TRIO.

We describe associations between TRIO and patient, disease, and treatment characteristics in a multivariate risk model that could lead to an improved risk stratification of off-therapy patients, and which should be validated in a prospective manner.