Background: Despite major advances in the field of hematopoietic stem cell
transplantation (HSCT), life-threatening complications still occur. Quantifying
the risk of toxicity for individual patients is challenging, but essential for
accurate pre-HSCT counseling.
Aim: Validate 6 prognostic scoring systems for prediction of mortality risk in
pediatrics post allogeneic HSCT [Hematopoietic cell transplantation
comorbidity index (HCT-CI), Augmented HCT-CI, European Society for Blood
and Marrow Transplantation score (EBMT), Pre-transplantation assessment of
mortality score (PAM), disease risk index (DRI) and Endothelial Activation and
Stress index (EASIx)].
Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 401 pediatric patients who underwent
their first allogeneic HSCT in the period between January 2015 to December
2019. Patients are stratified into different risk groups according to these
prognostic indices. We assessed the validation of different risk groups of these
systems in predicting OS of the patients. Many patients, transplant-related risk
factors and different scoring systems were studied to detect predictors of OS.
Results: 3-years Overall survival of benign group was 77%, where in malignant
group was 73.2%. HCT-CI (AUC 53% & 61.8% in benign & malignant group
respectively) and Augmented HCT-CI (AUC 52.3% in benign and 61.7% in
malignant patients) were found to have most sensitive scores to predict 3-year
OS in both disease groups. With comparing risk categories of each scoring
system, we found that Augmented HCT-CI (P=0.039 & 0.03) in benign &
malignant patients respectively) and EASIx (P=0.02 & 0.045 in benign and
malignant groups respectively) had a significant power for prediction of 3-year
OS in both disease groups where, PAM score (P=0.04) showed significance in
benign group and DRI (P=0.023) in malignant group. After adjusting many
patients and transplant related factors, Augmented HCT-CI showed the most
significant score to predict the mortality risk in pediatrics (P=0.042).
Conclusion: Augmented HCT-CI was found to have a strong power to predict
mortality risk in pediatric patients post allo-HSCT. Female gender, older age
and high ferritin level pre-transplant were associated with increased mortality
risk in pediatrics post allo-HSCT.