Orthotopic cardiac transplantation for dilated cardiomyopathy after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

Abstract

We report the case of a 26-year-old man with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who underwent bone marrow transplantation (BMT) from an HLA-identical sibling-donor when in first complete remission. He developed a dilated cardiomyopathy 9 months post-BMT and subsequently underwent orthotopic heart transplantation. He remains in complete hematological remission more than 12 months after surgery with normal cardiac function and an excellent performance status. Although cardiac transplantation has been carried out for chemotherapy-induced cardiomyopathy in cancer patients, to our knowledge cardiac transplantation following BMT has not been reported previously.