Role Of Cardiac MRI for Patients with PAH

MRI OF PULMONARY ARTERY

Pulmonary arterial hypertension , or PAH, is increased pressure in the pulmonary arteries. These arteries carry blood from your heart to your lungs to pick up oxygen.

PH causes symptoms such as shortness of breath during routine activity (for example, climbing two flights of stairs), tiredness, chest pain, and a racing heartbeat. As the disease worsens, its symptoms may limit all physical activity..

Three types of changes can affect the pulmonary arteries and cause PH:

• The walls of the arteries tighten.
• The walls of the arteries are stiff at birth or become stiff from an overgrowth of cells.
• Blood clots form in the arteries.

Recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology have led to the development of techniques for noninvasive assessment of cardiovascular structure and function, including hemodynamic parameters in the pulmonary circulation, which are superior in their identification of right ventricular morphologic changes. These advantages make cardiac MRI an attractive modality for following up and providing prognoses in patients with PAH. In this review, we summarize recent developments in the use of MRI for the diagnosis, assessment, and ongoing monitoring of patients with PAH. Over the coming decade, it can be anticipated that continued improvements in MRI image acquisition, spatial and temporal resolution, and analytical techniques will result in improved understanding of PAH pathophysiology, diagnosis, and prognostic variables, and will supplement, and may even replace, some of the invasive procedures currently applied routinely to the evaluation of PAH.