Cardiac MRI

Anthracycline is an effective form of chemotherapy, but it has been shown to severely damage the hearts of many children who undergo treatment. Up to now, most children suffering from this heart damage find their heart walls thinning and by the time they are diagnosed it’s usually much too late to do anything about it. Ultrasounds would frequently miss the heart defect until years following the treatment, once the irreversible damage had already taken its toll.

But a new technique was unveiled on June 10th. Through extensive testing, the T1 MRI has been shown to be more accurate, more efficient, and safer than existing techniques used to detect heart disease in children. Doctors have been able to see childhood heart defects earlier and more effectively than with the ultrasounds (which erroneously show the hearts to be perfectly fine). This is a great medical advancement for detection of early childhood heart diseases.