Interstudy reproducibility of right ventricular volumes, function, and mass with cardiovascular magnetic resonance

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) has shown excellent results for interstudy reproducibility in the assessment of left ventricular (LV) parameters. However, interstudy reproducibility data for the more complex-shaped right ventricle in a large study group have not yet been reported. We sought to determine the interstudy reproducibility of measurements of right ventricular (RV) volumes, function, and mass with CMR and compare it with correspondent LV values.

Sixty subjects (47 men; 20 healthy volunteers, 20 patients with heart failure, 20 patients with ventricular hypertrophy) underwent 2 CMR studies for assessment of RV measurements with a minimum time interval between each study.

The overall interstudy reproducibility (range between groups) for the RV was 6.2% (4.2%-7.8%) for end-diastolic volume, 14.1% (8.1%-18.1%) for end-systolic volume, 8.3% (4.3%-10.4%) for ejection fraction (EF), and 8.7% (7.8%-9.4%) for RV mass. RV reproducibility was not as good as for the LV for all measures in all 3 groups, but this was only statistically significant for EF (P <.01).

CMR showed good interstudy reproducibility for RV function parameters in healthy subjects, patients with heart failure, and patients with hypertrophy, which suggests that CMR is reliable for serial RV assessment. These data can be used to power sample sizes for longitudinal research studies of RV volume and function. The reproducibility values were similar to, but generally lower than, the reproducibility values for the LV in the same study population, which indicates that sample sizes for RV studies are in general larger than those for LV studies.