Routine diagnostic for PH
A recent paper in JCMR (Knight et al, 2019) put online on september 9th shows the feasibility of CMR in routine screening for pulmonary hypertension. Fifty patients were investigated for suspected or known PH underwent right heart cath in the CMR. Durations of separate procedural components were recorded, including time taken to pass the catheter from the femoral vein to a stable wedge position (procedure time) and total time the patient spent in the CMR department (department time). The study shows that after initial learning and optimization,total department time per patient was under 60 min, and 3-4 patients can be completed in one afternoon. Therefore the procedure is now routine making the extra visit to the cathlab redundant. A win-win for patient and hospital.