Impact of magnetic resonance imaging on cardiac mortality in thalassemia major

✍ Scribed by Giorgos Chouliaras; Vasilios Berdoukas; Vassilis Ladis; Antonis Kattamis; Antonia Chatziliami; Christina Fragodimitri; Fotis Karabatsos; Jacqueline Youssef; Markissia Karagiorga-Lagana

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 137 KB
• Volume: 34
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1053-1807
• DOI: 10.1002/jmri.22621

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Purpose:

To evaluate whether the introduction of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the management of thalassemia major (TM) patients has affected the risk of cardiac death.

Materials and Methods:

In all, 804 TM patients from two large reference units were included and the risk of dying of cardiac causes, before and after their first MRI, was assessed by a Cox proportional hazards model with time‐dependent covariates.

Results:

Adding information from MRI reduced the risk of cardiac death from 6.0 deaths/1000 patient‐years to 3.9 deaths/1000 patient‐years (P = 0.22). The risk of cardiac death before having an MRI study was 82% higher compared to the risk observed after the first MRI.

Conclusion:

MRI has become a vital component of ongoing management and seems to have a beneficial effect on cardiac mortality in TM. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2011;. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.