Diagnosis of myocarditis in patients with MINOCA using cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging is an imaging technique used primarily to image the internal organs of the human body. Thanks to it, it is possible to obtain sections of a certain area of the human body, from which it is possible to create the resulting 3D image of the desired organ after further processing. Magnetic resonance imaging of the cardiovascular system (CMR) is one of the top possibilities of this diagnostic method.

Within the International Clinical Research Center of St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno (FNUSA-ICRC) the research team of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) led by Doc. MUDr. Roman Panovsky, Ph.D. deals with the possibilities of this method. Three years ago, they published an article in the journal BMC Cardiocascular Disorders (Impact Factor F 1.8), which looked at the unique benefits of this diagnostic method in patients with Myocardial Infarction with Non-Obstructive Coronary Arteries (MINOCA). This work has now been followed by another publication, this time in the prestigious Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging (IF 12.7), which published a meta-analysis of studies using CMR in patients with MINOCA.

Researchers from the USA, France, Germany and also from FNUSA-ICRC in the article deal with the prevalence of myocarditis (incidence of inflammation of the heart muscle) in patients with MINOCA in connection with the occurrence of coronary atherosclerosis. The results show that if patients with a working diagnosis of MINOCA have angiographically normal coronary arteries, a CMR diagnosis of acute myocarditis is significantly more likely (46%) than in patients with smooth-walled coronary arteries (32%).

Pictures 1 – 3 : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5490179/
Picture 4: https://imaging.onlinejacc.org/content/early/2020/06/25/j.jcmg.2020.02.037