Is There a Place for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Evaluation of Cardiovascular Involvement in Rheumatic Diseases?

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is a noninvasive, nonradiating imaging technique, which provides novel information for the evaluation of cardiovascular diseases. Until now it has been successfully used for the evaluation of congenital and acquired heart diseases, cardiac tumors-mass, iron overload, and myocardial fibrosis detection. Recently, its diagnostic capabilities have been extended to the evaluation of myocardial inflammation and myocardial perfusion. Currently, it is considered the gold standard for the evaluation of volumes, mass, ejection fraction of atriums and ventricles, quantification of iron overload in different organs, detection and follow-up of myocardial inflammation, myocardial infarction and its complications, evaluation of the aorta, detection of anomalous coronary arteries, and ectatic or aneurysmatic coronary arteries. All the above applications and mainly the CMR ability to detect myocardial inflammation, perfusion defects, fibrosis, coronary and great arteries aneurysms make it a valuable tool for cardiovascular system assessment, commonly affected during the course of rheumatic diseases. The technique has been already successfully used in the evaluation of vasculitides, systemic lupus erythematosus, myositis, and scleroderma. However, further studies are needed to evaluate its usefulness as a diagnostic and monitoring tool of cardiovascular involvement in rheumatic patients. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Semin Arthritis Rheum 41:488-496