Coronary Flow Reserve Evaluation in PET and in MRI Scanner in Heart Transplanted Patients : Comparison With Multi-detectors Scanner

Heart transplantation is the ultimate therapeutic option in patients with end-stage heart failure. Since advances in the treatment of acute rejection has increased early transplant survival, cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is the main factor limiting long-term survival. The prevalence of angiographically proven CAV is high, documented in 40-50% of transplant recipients 5 years after transplantation. Therefore, annual coronary angiography remains widely used to monitor transplanted patients, although pathologic studies and intravascular ultrasonography have demonstrated that coronary angiography underestimates the severity of CAV. Perfusion SPECT may underestimate allograft vasculopathy in case of diffuse coronary lesions. In this setting, the assessment of coronary reserve by means of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and perfusion cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) have not been investigated.