For patients like Susan Huebner, going through a battery of tests to diagnose and treat heart problems can be strenuous. Patients in central Iowa are fortunate there is a new cardiac technology available: cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (cardiac MRI).
Mercy Medical Center and Iowa Heart Center have partnered to provide cardiac patients with access to this new diagnostic technology, which saves time and helps produce the most comprehensive heart disease diagnoses available. Cardiac MRI is a safe, painless, noninvasive test that creates detailed images of a patient’s heart. To create the images, radio frequency waves, a strong magnet in the machine, and a computer work together to capture live images of the heart in motion. Still and moving images of the heart and major blood vessels help identify heart muscle areas not receiving adequate blood supply from the coronary arteries, as well as muscle damaged by a heart attack.
“Cardiac MRI is the new gold standard for studying heart function,” says Dr. Eric Martin, M.D., medical director of Preventive Cardiology, Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT and MR Imaging. “With cardiac MRI, we can gather information and high-quality heart images in a very efficient manner.”
Dr. Martin and a radiologist from Mercy are present for each test to ensure that the customized protocol for a specific patient produces adequate images to make a proper diagnosis. “With one test, we gather information that previously required a treadmill, ultrasound, and nuclear testing,” says Dr. Roman Mirsky, M.D., radiologist with Diagnostic Imaging Associates at Mercy Medical Center.
Dr. Martin recommended Susan, 54, undergo a cardiac MRI in early November 2010, after experiencing symptoms of a heart attack in mid-October. The tests that were run on Susan while she was in the hospital didn’t point to a heart attack, but Dr. Martin wanted to be sure of the diagnosis because Susan has a family history of heart attacks. She was diagnosed with myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.
Dr. Mirsky says the cardiac MRI is very versatile and helps identify a number of heart conditions, including new-onset congestive heart failure, ischemic heart disease caused by blocked arteries to the heart, heart muscle disease, heart valve problems, pericardial (sac around the heart) disease, congenital heart defects, and cardiac tumors.
Patients must be referred by their primary care physician or cardiologist for the exam, which can last 60 to 90 minutes, depending on the images needed.
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