Cardiac and hepatic iron and ejection fraction in thalassemia major: Multicentre prospective comparison of combined Deferiprone and Deferoxamine therapy against Deferiprone or Deferoxamine Monotherapy

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of the treatment groups at baseline

	P	Deferiprone group (n = 39)	Combined group (n = 51)	Deferoxamine group (n = 74)	P
Age (yrs)	0.136	31.5 ± 5.3	29.6 ± 6.5	32.7 ± 8.5	0.032
Male (%)	0.022	69.2%	45.1%	48.6%	0.719
Chel. starting age (yrs)	0.499	5.1 ± 5.1	4.3 ± 4.1	6.6 ± 4.9	0.030
Pre-transfusion Hb (g/dl)	0.379	9.5 ± 0.7	9.6 ± 0.5	9.7 ± 0.6	0.213
Ferritin (ng/l)	0.001	941 ± 1541	1814 ± 1033	1093 ± 1256	0.001
Global Heart (ms)	0.0001	31.3 ± 11.3	21.5 ± 12.9	28.5 ± 10.7	0.002
MRI CIC (mg/g dry w)	0.001	0.94 ± 0.79	2.15 ± 2.38	1.03 ± 0.79	0.001
*N seg. with T2 < 20 ms**	0.001	3.9 ± 6.2	8.7± 7.0	4.4 ± 5.9	0.001
*Mid septum T2 (ms)**	0.0001	34.0 ± 13.0	22.3 ± 14.3	30.6 ± 12.8	0.001
LV EF (%)	0.643	61.8 ± 9.0	62.6 ± 7.0	61.6 ± 6.0	0.364
LV EDVI (ml/m2)	0.069	91.9 ± 20.0	84.7 ± 17.6	89.6 ± 20.2	0.164
RV EF (%)	0.336	59.9 ± 8.8	61.6 ± 6.8	60.9 ± 7.0	0.587
RV EDVI (ml/m2)	0.126	89.7 ± 19.9	83.8 ± 16.4	88.1 ± 20.5	0.210
*Liver T2 (ms)**	0.110	8.9 ± 8.0	6.3 ± 6.8	11.0 ± 7.5	0.0001
MRI LIC (mg/g dry weight)	0.330	8.2 ± 8.9	10.3 ± 10.1	5.3 ± 6.2	0.003

All values are quoted as mean ± SD. The P-values concern the comparison between combined and deferiprone groups and between combined and deferoxamine groups.

ISSN: 1532-429X