Individual research recommendation details

Recommendation ID

NG106/2

Question

Cardiac MRI versus other imaging techniques for diagnosing heart failure:- What is the optimal imaging technique for the diagnosis of heart failure?

Any explanatory notes
(if applicable)

Why this is important:- The role of cardiac MRI in the detection and characterisation of several structural and functional cardiac abnormalities has become well established over the past 25 years. In people with heart failure, cardiac MRI provides reliable and reproducible assessments of the left ventricular (and to a degree the right ventricular) shapes, volumes and ejection fractions. It also provides spatial assessments of the congenital and acquired structural abnormalities of the heart and their interrelationships with the remainder of the heart, as well as functional and haemodynamic assessments of these abnormalities on the heart's performance. Finally, cardiac MRI provides
valuable information about the myocardial structure and metabolism, including the presence of inflammation, scarring, fibrosis and infiltration. Cardiac MRI is an expensive form of imaging, and much of this diagnostic information could be provided by less costly non-invasive imaging techniques, chiefly echocardiography. This question aims to find the most clinically and costeffective imaging technique for the clinical diagnosis of heart failure.

Source guidance details

Comes from guidance

Chronic heart failure in adults: diagnosis and management

Number

NG106

Date issued

September 2018

Other details