Skip to main content
  • Oral presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

Severe aortic stenosis has blunted myocardial T1 relaxation response to vasodilator stress: a cardiac magnetic resonance adenosine stress test study

Background

Aortic stenosis is characterized by impaired myocardial perfusion reserve due to coronary microvascular dysfunction. T1 mapping is sensitive to myocardial water content of both intra- and extracellular in origin, but the effect of intravascular compartment changes on T1 has never been assessed previously. We aimed to assess the effect of adenosine-induced vasodilatation on native (pre-contrast) T1 values in patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) before and after aortic valve replacement (AVR).

Methods

42 subjects (26 patients with severe AS without obstructive coronary artery disease and 16 controls) underwent cardiovascular magnetic resonance at 3T for native T1-mapping (ShMOLLI), first-pass perfusion (myocardial perfusion reserve index-MPRI) at rest and during adenosine stress, and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE).

Results

AS patients had increased resting myocardial T1 (1196±47ms vs. 1168±27ms, p=0.037), reduced MPRI (0.92±0.31 vs. 1.74±0.32, p<0.001), and increased left ventricular mass index (LVMI) and LGE volume compared to controls (Table 1). T1 values had positive correlation with LVMI, LGE volume but an inverse correlation with aortic valve area and MPRI. During adenosine stress, the maximal T1 in AS was similar to controls (1240±51ms vs. 1238±54ms, p=0.88), possibly reflecting a similar level of maximal coronary vasodilatation in both groups (Figure 1). Interestingly, the T1 response to stress was blunted in AS (ΔT1 3.7±2.7% vs. 6.0±4.2% in controls, p=0.013). Seven months after AVR (n=16) myocardial T1 and response to adenosine stress recovered towards normal.

Table 1 Baseline clinical characteristics of severe AS patients and normal controls
Figure 1
figure 1

Rest and adenosine stress T1 values.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that intravascular compartment is a significant contributor to myocardial T1 relaxation time. Vasodilator stress T1 mapping may be a potential technique to assess coronary reserve without the need for contrast administration. Performing T1 mapping soon after vasodilator stress may affect ECV measurements given that hyperemia alone substantially alters T1 values.

Funding

N/A.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mahmod, M., Piechnik, S.K., Levelt, E. et al. Severe aortic stenosis has blunted myocardial T1 relaxation response to vasodilator stress: a cardiac magnetic resonance adenosine stress test study. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 17 (Suppl 1), O28 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-17-S1-O28

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-17-S1-O28

Keywords