Acute myocarditis strain and CMR (ISMETT)

A single-centre cohort of patients with acute myocarditis whose left ventricular ejection fraction was preserved. The study asked whether left ventricular deformation measured with speckle-tracking echocardiography, and the amount of delayed enhancement on cardiac MRI, can flag patients at short-term risk of supraventricular arrhythmias. The raw data behind the article sit in a restricted Zenodo record deposited by an author at ISMETT in Palermo, and have to be requested from its owners.

Composition

70 patients with acute myocarditis and preserved ejection fraction were enrolled, with a mean age of 31 years (SD 14). Sex distribution, the number of patients with supraventricular arrhythmias and the follow-up length are not given in the abstract or the record.

Acquisition

Patients had speckle-tracking echocardiography, from which longitudinal systolic strain of the left ventricle and mechanical dispersion were derived, including layer-specific strain (subepicardial, mid-wall, subendocardial) in the apical 4-chamber view. Cardiac MRI with quantitative measurement of delayed enhancement mass was done in a subset of 43 patients; the abstract wording leaves open whether the strain measures were also limited to that subset. Scanners, field strength and sequence parameters are not stated in the public material.

Annotations

Per-patient strain and mechanical dispersion values, delayed enhancement mass and the occurrence of supraventricular arrhythmias. No image-level labels are described.

Known limitations

The record lists no files, so it is unclear whether it holds echocardiography or MRI images or only tabular measurements. The cohort is small and the MRI subset smaller still. Only abstract-level facts are public, so the acquisition protocols are unknown. Access is at the owners' discretion even though the record carries a CC BY 4.0 label.