Myocardial iron overload in sickle/thalassemia patients of Italian origin

Background Sickle-thalassemia is an inherited hemoglobin disorder resulting from the combined heterozygosity for sicklecell and b-thalassemia genes. Myocardial iron overload in patients with sickle-thalassemia has been poorly studied; however, a report has shown no evidence of cardiac iron in a small group (n=10) of multitransfused Arab patients. The current study aims to further evaluate cardiac iron overload in a larger group of Italian patients using a T2* multislice approach and explore its correlation with transfusions, age and sex.