Impact of magnetic resonance imaging on cardiac mortality in thalassemia major

Purpose:

To evaluate whether the introduction of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the management of thalassemia major (TM) patients has affected the risk of cardiac death.

Materials and Methods:

In all, 804 TM patients from two large reference units were included and the risk of dying of cardiac causes, before and after their first MRI, was assessed by a Cox proportional hazards model with time‐dependent covariates.

Results:

Adding information from MRI reduced the risk of cardiac death from 6.0 deaths/1000 patient‐years to 3.9 deaths/1000 patient‐years (P = 0.22). The risk of cardiac death before having an MRI study was 82% higher compared to the risk observed after the first MRI.

Conclusion:

MRI has become a vital component of ongoing management and seems to have a beneficial effect on cardiac mortality in TM. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2011;. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.