Residual pulmonary vasodilative reserve predicts outcome in idiopathic pulmonary hypertension.

Objective: Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) remains a devastating and incurable, albeit treatable condition. Treatment response is not uniform and parameters that help to anticipate a rather benign or a malignant course of the disease are warranted. Acute pulmonary vasoreactivity testing during right heart catheterisation is recommended to identify a minority of patients with IPAH with sustained response to calcium channel blocker therapy.

Immediate and 12 months follow up of function and lead integrity after cranial MRI in 356 patients with conventional cardiac pacemakers.

Background: Conventional cardiac pacemakers are still often regarded as a contraindication to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We conducted this study to support the hypothesis that it is safe to scan patients with cardiac pacemakers in a 1.5 Tesla MRI, if close supervision and monitoring as well as adequate pre- and postscan programming is provided.

MRI for detection of anomalous pulmonary venous drainage in patients with sinus venosus atrial septal defects.

Purpose of this survey was to estimate the value of MRI for the assessment of the anatomical and functional features of sinus venosus atrial septal defect (SVD). This prospective study included 13 surgically proven cases of SVD out of 81 subjects submitted to MRI due to inconclusive transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) or suspicion of high intracardiac and/or extracardiac shunt volumes based on echocardiographic findings. MRI examination included cine SSFP sequences, contrast-enhanced 3D gradient-echo (GE) sequences for MR angiography (MRA) and phase-contrast flow-measurements.