"The Right Heart" - Case-Based Webinar (CME)-Video

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The webinar focused on cardiac MRI (CMR) in pulmonary hypertension (PH) and right heart assessment. The speakers introduced the SEMR educational series and then explained how CMR helps evaluate biventricular function, great vessel flow, septal dynamics, and tissue characterization. They emphasized that CMR is especially valuable for assessing right ventricular size, function, and remodeling, and for quantifying shunts or valve regurgitation.<br /><br />Four cases illustrated key scenarios:  <br />1. A young man with severe PH and no shunt, ultimately diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension.  <br />2. A woman with Sjögren’s syndrome whose right ventricular function improved markedly after PH therapy, showing CMR’s role in tracking treatment response.  <br />3. A patient with scleroderma whose symptoms and catheterization suggested mixed PH, but CMR tissue mapping showed myocardial inflammation/fibrosis and left-heart involvement.  <br />4. A man with an atrial septal defect, where phase-contrast CMR quantified a significant left-to-right shunt, and MR-guided right heart catheterization demonstrated practical combined imaging and hemodynamic assessment.<br /><br />The discussion highlighted that PH is a hemodynamic diagnosis requiring catheterization, but CMR adds major value in phenotyping disease, identifying shunts, and assessing prognosis and treatment response.

Keywords

cardiac MRI

pulmonary hypertension

right heart assessment

right ventricular function

biventricular function

tissue characterization

atrial septal defect

phase-contrast CMR

right heart catheterization