Stress pulmonary circulation parameters assessed by a cardiovascular magnetic resonance in patients after a heart transplant

• Published in: Scientific reports 2022-04, Vol.12 (1), p.6130-6130, Article 6130
• Main Authors: Opatřil, Lukáš, Panovsky, Roman, Mojica-Pisciotti, Mary, Máchal, Jan, Krejčí, Jan, Holeček, Tomáš, Masárová, Lucia, Feitová, Věra, Godava, Július, Kincl, Vladimír, Kepák, Tomáš, Závodná, Gabriela, Špinarová, Lenka
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 692/4019; 692/53/2421; 692/699/75; Adenosine; Biomarkers; Children; Heart diseases; Heart rate; Heart transplantation; Heart Transplantation - adverse effects; Heart transplants; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; multidisciplinary; Perfusion; Pulmonary Circulation - physiology; Retrospective Studies; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Stress; Ventricle
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-09739-z

Rest pulmonary circulation parameters such as pulmonary transit time (PTT), heart rate corrected PTT (PTTc) and pulmonary transit beats (PTB) can be evaluated using several methods, including the first-pass perfusion from cardiovascular magnetic resonance. As previously published, up to 58% of patients after HTx have diastolic dysfunction detectable only in stress conditions. By using adenosine stress perfusion images, stress analogues of the mentioned parameters can be assessed. By dividing stress to rest biomarkers, potential new ratio parameters (PTT ratio and PTTc ratio) can be obtained. The objectives were to (1) provide more evidence about stress pulmonary circulation biomarkers, (2) present stress to rest ratio parameters, and (3) assess these biomarkers in patients with presumed diastolic dysfunction after heart transplant (HTx) and in childhood cancer survivors (CCS) without any signs of diastolic dysfunction. In this retrospective study, 48 patients after HTx, divided into subgroups based on echocardiographic signs of diastolic dysfunction (41 without, 7 with) and 39 CCS were enrolled. PTT was defined as the difference between the onset time of the signal intensity increase in the left and the right ventricle. PTT in rest conditions were without significant differences when comparing the CCS and HTx subgroup without diastolic dysfunction (4.96 ± 0.93 s vs. 5.51 ± 1.14 s, p = 0.063) or with diastolic dysfunction (4.96 ± 0.93 s vs. 6.04 ± 1.13 s, p = 0.13). However, in stress conditions, both PTT and PTTc were significantly lower in the CCS group than in the HTx subgroups, (PTT: 3.76 ± 0.78 s vs. 4.82 ± 1.03 s, p