A new study evaluated the feasibility of utilizing magnetic resonance (MR) imaging-derived duration of vortical blood flow in the main pulmonary artery as a marker for mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP).
The study included 145 patients with known or suspected PH who underwent both RHC and three-directional phase-contrast MR imaging of the main pulmonary artery. The duration of vortical blood flow in the main pulmonary artery was defined as the percentage of the cardiac cycle (tvortex) and compared to mPAP as determined by RHC.
At the end of the study, mPAP was demonstrated to increase linearly with tvortex; suggesting that this relationship could be used to accurately predict mPAP greater than 16.0mmHg. Furthermore, using this linear model, the predicted tvortex of greater than 14.3% was found to be specific for pulmonary hypertension.
The results of this study support the potential use MR-imaging to predict elevated mPAP. However, this study had a small sample size and additional trials are needed to demonstrate reproducibility of this result.
