Pediatric Right Ventricular Cardiac Steatosis following Immunosuppressive Treatment.

Right ventricular myocardial fatty infiltration has been observed in pediatric cardiac allografts with an associated decrease in graft life expectancy. A possible explanation included an immunosuppressant drug effect which prompted us to examine common factors between non-cardiac transplanted immunosuppressed patients and postmortem hearts of pediatric patients who died of non-cardiac causes. Sixty-one of 1,030 pediatric autopsies were from immunosuppressed children who were treated with corticosteroids for malignant tumors, non-cardiac transplantations, or other chronic clinical conditions.