Cardioprotective effect of early dexrazoxane use in anthracycline treated pediatric patients

Anthracyclines play a major role in chemotherapeutic regimens for a variety of pediatric cancers, but produce undesirable dose-related cardiotoxicity. Dexrazoxane reduces early myocardial injury during anthracycline treatment, but data remain insufficient to fully understand its cardioprotective effectiveness in treating pediatric cancers and additional research is necessary to find efficient methods of dexrazoxane administration. Therefore, we retrospectively evaluated the cardioprotective effect of dexrazoxane against anthracyclines in 258 pediatric cancer patients who had received any anthracyclines from January 1997 to May 2005 at a tertiary teaching hospital in Korea. The results of this study suggest that the early use of dexrazoxane protects against the development of cardiotoxicity during anthracycline treatment in pediatric cancer patients. Further studies involving larger pediatric cancer patients are needed to evaluate the cardioprotective effect of dexrazoxane at higher cumulative doses of anthracyclines and on late-onset cardiotoxicity in long-term survivors.