The Role of Cardiac MRI In Coronary Heart Disease Management

Abstract

Coronary artery disease is still the major cause of mortality in the western countries . Many studies have been conducted to find what are the best investigation to be included in the diagnosis, risk assessment and to assess the effect of ischemic heart disease ( including ACS) on the cardiac function as well as predict the response to treatment and future possibility of recurrent disease. CMR is now a crucial part of the diagnosis of heart disease especially the coronary artery disease (CAD) for many reasons: It makes early diagnosis which in turn means early intervention and less incidence of some of the complications of CAD. As the CMR examination do not expose patients to radiation, it can be used repetitively without harming the Since CAD is considered to be a chronic disease, the role of CMR in monitoring CAD patients regularly over many decades is highly valuable. In this litriture review, the specific role of CMR in the management of ischemic heart disease is studied in details by looking at many published articles . These articles focused on the performance of CMR in comparison to others methods of diagnosis. Some of these studies demonstrate the capability of CMR to diagnose CAD with both high sensitivity and specificity which could be comparable to other modalities like x-ray angiography ,CT scan and SPECT and others. Although the current role of CMR in the diagnosis of CDA is limited ,in comparison to other tests like CT and SPECT , this review has proved that CMR is an accurate diagnostic tool and has a comparable sensitivity and specificity to all other tests with exclusion of CT scan which has better performance