Early assessment of sub-clinical cardiac involvement in systemic sclerosis (SSc) using delayed enhancement cardiac magnetic resonance (CE-MRI)》.pdf

European Journal of Radiology 82 (2013) e268–e273 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect European Journal of Radiology j o u rn al h omepage: w w w. elsev /locate/ejr ad Early assessment of sub-clinical cardiac involvement in systemic sclerosis (SSc) using delayed enhancement cardiac magnetic resonance (CE-MRI) Ernesto Di Cesare a,∗ , Sara Battisti a , Alessandra Di Sibio a , Paola Cipriani b , Roberto Giacomelli b , Vasiliky Liakouli b , Piero Ruscitti b , Carlo Masciocchi a a Department of Radiology, University of L’Aquila, Via Vetoio 1, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy b Rheumatology Clinic, Department of Internal Medicine and Public Health, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Objectives: Systemic sclerosis heart involvement (SHI) is one of systemic sclerosis (SSc) most frequent Received 31 July 2012 complications, both in diffuse (dcSSc) and limited (lcSSc) cutaneous forms of disease. Nowadays, SHI is Received in revised form 6 December 2012 a major factor decreasing SSc survival rate because, when clinically evident, is associated with 70% of Accepted 6 February 2013 mortality at 5 years. SHI shows different forms, primary and/or secondary. Primary myocardial SHI is characterized by fibrosis. Aim of our study is to assess the presence and pattern of fibrosis as detected by Keywords: cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) in systemic sclerosis. Systemic sclerosis (SSc)