Biventricular mechanics in prediction of severe myocardial fibrosis in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy: CMR study

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to compare the ability of various parameters of myocardial mechanics to predict large amounts of biventricular fibrosis assessed via T1 mapping in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).MaterialCardiovascular magnetic resonance feature tracking analysis and T1 mapping were performed in 26 patients with DCM [mean age: 34.4 ± 9.1 years, 15 (57.6%) males]. The values of various parameters of myocardial mechanics at predicting advanced left-ventricle (LV) and right-ventricle (RV) fibrosis were compared using logistic regression analysis and receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis.ResultsThere were 7 (26.9%) patients with a large amount of LV fibrosis and 9 (34.6%) patients with severe RV fibrosis.ROC curve analysis revealed that the model of combined LV strain rates (AUC = 0.902) offered superb ability at predicting large amounts of LV fibrosis. The models including RV strain rates (AUC = 0.974), a combination of RV strains, strain rates and clinical parameters (AUC = 0.993) as well as the RV radial strain rate alone model (AUC = 0.961) yielded outstanding performance in discriminating large and small amounts of RV fibrosis.In multivariate analysis, the LV circumferential strain (LVCR) and RV radial (RVR) strain rate were the only independent predictors of large amounts of LV and RV fibrosis, respectively.ConclusionsIndices of myocardial deformation, especially combined with clinical features, offered a superlative ability to differentiate high from low degrees of fibrosis in DCM patients. Among all analyzed parameters of myocardial mechanics, LVCR and RVR rate alone were the independent predictors of high degrees of LV and RV fibrosis, respectively.