Keywords:
Cirrhosis, Diagnostic procedure, MR, Cardiac
Authors:
G. Gentile1, G. Mamone1, G. Marrone1, D. Filì2, C. Falletta2, F. Clemenza2, A. Luca1; 1Palermo/IT, 2Palermo, ITALY/IT
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2013/C-1856
Methods and Materials
Twenty-one cirrhotic patients without known cardiovascular pathologies were enrolled: 15 patients with advanced cirrhosis and serum creatinine > 1.5 mg/ml (MELD 14±4) candidates to TIPS for refractory ascites (TIPS group) and 6 patients with gdfcompensated cirrhosis (MELD 7±1.2) (control group) (TABLE 1).
Table 1: Baseline characteristics
Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (MR) and Transthoracic Echocardiography (TTE) were performed in baseline conditions in all patients and one month later after TIPS placement (Fig.
1-2).
Fig. 1: Pre-TIPS condition
Fig. 2: Post-TIPS placement
All MR images were acquired with a 1.5 T scanner (GE Signa Excite).
Multiple Short Axis (SA) cine images using a steady state free precession sequence were acquired (30 phases; 8 mm thickness; no gap; 8 views per segment; NEX 1; FOV 40 cm; phase FOV 1; matrix 224x224; reconstruction matrix 256x256; flip angle 45°; TR/TE equal to 3.5/1.5; bandwidth 125 KHz).
A 2D GRE-IR (Gradient Echo Inversion Recovery - thickness 8 mm,
no gap,
matrix 128x128,
FOV 35 cm,
phase FOV 0,75,
25° flip angle,
TE min full,
TI 180-220 ms,
bandwidth 125 KHz) 10 minutes after Gadolinium administration (0.1 mmol/kg) was employed for the measurement of Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE).
All MR images were analyzed on a commercially available Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance workstation with standard software (MassAnalysis,
Version 6.0) (Fig.
3).
Fig. 3: MassAnalysis Software