Abstract Body (Do not enter title and authors here): Background: Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is a rapidly progressive form of coronary atherosclerosis limiting long-term survival after heart transplantation.
Objectives: We evaluated the diagnostic and prognostic yield of quantitative stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) perfusion for CAV detection in heart transplant recipients.
Methods: Patients who received orthotopic heart transplants and underwent stress CMR for CAV assessment were included in the study and followed up for almost 2 years (median 1.8; IQR 0.9,2.7). The diagnostic accuracy of qualitative and quantitative stress CMR was assessed by calculating sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV), using invasive or CT coronary angiography as the reference for CAV detection. The area under the curve (AUC) was compared for qualitative and quantitative stress CMR. Adjusted hazard ratios for major adverse cardiac events (MACE), including death and unplanned cardiac hospitalizations were derived in all patients. The global myocardial perfusion reserve index (MPRi) was obtained by normalization to the rate-pressure product.
Results: In a cohort of 60 patients, n=18 (30%) had significant CAV (grade 2 or 3), and n=11 (18.3%) experienced MACE. At the Youden index threshold of 2.1, the myocardial perfusion reserve index (MPRi) demonstrated a sensitivity of 85.7%, a specificity of 70.3%, a PPV of 52.2%, and an NPV of 92.9%. The MPRi was significantly more accurate than visual assessment (p < 0.001) in identifying underlying CAV (Figure 1) and it was an independent predictor of MACE (HR:0.26;95%CI:0.07,0.93; log-rank p=0.022; Figure 2), while the visual presence of inducible myocardial perfusion defect did not (HR:2.23;95%CI:0.57,8.66; p=0.2).
Conclusions: In patients with previous heart transplantation, quantitative stress CMR perfusion has incremental diagnostic and prognostic value over qualitative stress CMR for the non-invasive detection of CAV.