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Role of adenosine stress perfusion CMR in guiding clinical decision making in pediatric and congenital cardiology: a single pediatric center experience

Background

Compared to adults, coronary artery disease abnormalities, significant enough to warrant viability assessment and adenosine stress perfusion cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging, are rare in pediatric patients. As a result, the role of adenosine stress perfusion CMR as a routine clinical imaging tool in these patients has not been clearly defined. We aim to evaluate the impact clinically-indicated adenosine stress perfusion CMR on decision-making and follow-up strategy.

Methods

Medical records and CMR images of all adenosine stress perfusion CMR studies performed on pediatric patients between August 2009 and May 2013 at a single institution were retrospectively reviewed. All examinations were performed on a 1.5T Siemens Avanto MRI scanner. Patients </=10 years old were examined under general anesthesia. Adenosine stress perfusion CMR protocol included adenosine at 140 μg/kg/min for a target heat rate increase of 20% or infusion duration of up to 5 minutes and gadolinium of 0.1 mmol/kg. Institutional review board approved this study and all patients signed informed consent.

Results

Twenty-seven patients were enrolled (median age 14 years, range 1.4-18.2 years). Twenty-six patients completed the protocol with one study terminated due to extreme chest discomfort and nausea. In all completed studies, a heart rate response of >20% was achieved. List of diagnoses and reasons for referral are reported in Table 1. 31% (8/26) of the patients had areas of inducible ischemia. Table 2 displays cardiac diagnoses, anatomical lesion on the coronary artery as proven by CMR or subsequent conventional x-ray angiography and clinical decision made after the results of the perfusion study for these patients. Two of the eight patients with areas of inducible ischemia underwent successful revascularisation, and repeat perfusion studies performed after the intervention showed no evidence of inducible ischemia.

Table 1 Cardiac diagnosis and reason for referral.
Table 2 Clinical Outcome of Positive Stress Test.

Conclusions

This retrospective study demonstrates that adenosine stress perfusion CMR performed in pediatric patients can positively direct clinical decision-making, Lack of ionising radiation makes this an attractive investigation with which to monitor response to revascularisation.

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the support received from Commonwealth Scholarships, UK National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), Royal Academy of Engineering and EPSRC. This report is independent research by the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre Funding Scheme. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health.

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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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Ntsinjana, H., Tann, O., Hughes, M. et al. Role of adenosine stress perfusion CMR in guiding clinical decision making in pediatric and congenital cardiology: a single pediatric center experience. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 16 (Suppl 1), P128 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-16-S1-P128

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-16-S1-P128

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