Follow-up of the patients after stem cell transplantation for pediatric dilated cardiomyopathy

Dilated cardiomyopathy is a serious problem in pediatric cardiology. Despite the relatively low incidence, the mortality is high. The conservative therapy does not improve the prognosis, and possibilities of heart transplantation are limited. There are multiple trials of use of stem cells for ischemic heart disease in the adult population. This allows us to believe that the method has perspectives in pediatric cardiology. We performed the cell therapy for seven patients, six of them had complete one yr follow-up after procedure. Five to 30 milliliters of bone marrow was aspirated from the iliac crest and 17 to 122 million BMCs were isolated. The average basal EF was 33.5%. We observed increasing of EF up to 54% (=9.54, p=0.00154) in a 6-month period and up to 54.5% (=10.82, p= 0.00315) after one yr. The changes of LVEDV also were observed. The LVEDV decreased in average per 13.05%. There were no observed side effects or heart rhythm disorders. Intramyocardial administration of bone marrow-derived progenitor cells proved to be a technically feasible and safe method. Up until now, the results obtained have been promising and we suppose that bone marrow-derived progenitor cell intramyocardial transplantation can be used.