Managing TM complications
Cardiac complications
Cardiac failure and serious arrhythmias are the major causes of
life-threatening morbidity and mortality in iron-overload patients.27
Before the availability of chelation therapy, cardiac disease was
patients or those who are poorly compliant with chelation therapy.28
Therefore, cardiac function is monitored annually beginning at 7 or
8 years of age by electrocardiogram, echocardiogram, 24-hour
Holter monitor, and recently by cardiac T2* MRI, which can detect
preclinical cardiac iron accumulation.29