Welcome to the August newsletter. The most important takeaway this month is to note the call for abstracts for the 25^th Annual Scientific Sessions—the call will run 1 to 26 September—don’t miss out! Another key feature to highlight this month is that SCMR is supporting the Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation in their awareness campaign, which will run throughout September—please do all you can to highlight this important cause!

On other issues, following our recent transition in operations to Association Management Center, all of our committees are taking stock and reviewing progress with their set out agendas. As chair of the communications committee, I aim to keep you informed each month with all SCMR developments, share member success stories, and update you on the latest CMR science & educational opportunities. I am greatly assisted in this endeavor by the entire communications committee—in particular, Purvi Parwani as social media subcommittee chair and Sylvia Chen as cases-of-the-week (COTW) editor-in-chief. I take this opportunity to encourage you to submit your own member success stories for the newsletter (in particular, we love hearing about new services around the world & the challenges you have faced) and to submit your best educational cases to COTW (a fantastic opportunity particularly for fellows—cases are now annually archived in JCMR providing PubMed referencing). Please also join the #WhyCMR chatter across all social media platforms—you will find friends, a few foes admittedly, and an entertaining mix of CMR updates, discussion, and debate.

The call for abstracts will open 1 September 2021 and close 26 September at 11:59 pm CT. Additional information on registration and abstract submission will be available on SCMR's website here.

This September, SCMR joins the Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation (CCF) in raising awareness for pediatric cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopathy is a serious heart condition that affects thousands of children and deserves greater attention and funding. View the facts on pediatric cardiomyopathy.

You can help spread the word about Children's Cardiomyopathy Awareness Month through word of mouth, email, and social media. To download images and fact sheets on the disease, visit CCF’s Awareness Month Resource Center.

On 19 July 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the proposed rule on the 2022 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS). Of note, there is a proposed overall 2.3 percent increase in OPPS payment rates for 2022. Click here for a chart of projected OPPS payments for CMR services. We are pleased that next year payments for CMR services are expected to increase by 2.6 percent.

For proposed rule highlights, including updates on fines for hospitals that fail to comply with hospital price transparency provisions, see the CMS fact sheet: Fact sheet summarizing the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM).

The existence of several classifications and nomenclatures in reference to the bicuspid aortic valve impedes the clinicians that evaluate patients with this condition and prevents communication in a common language about all structural, functional, and prognostic aspects of the disease among clinicians, surgeons, interventionalists, and researchers. Therefore, a group of CMR experts worked with distinguished experts to create a new common language for all disciplines involved. Before developing this new international definition, there were four pathological, four echocardiographic, two computed tomography, and one CMR nomenclatures, all of them varying from one another.

This collaborative work gave birth to a document titled “International Consensus Statement on Nomenclature and Classification of the Congenital Bicuspid Aortic Valve and Its Aortopathy, for Clinical, Surgical, Interventional, and Research Purposes” that, due to its relevance, was published simultaneously by multiple journals (Ann Thorac Surg. 2021 Sep;112(3):e203-e235, Eur J Cardiothorac Surg. 2021 Jul 22;ezab038, J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2021 Sep;162(3):e383-e414).

In support of these agencies’ efforts, SCMR encourages CMR practitioners to use their relevant regional mechanisms for vaccine adverse event reporting (such as VAERS in the U.S.) to report any suspected cases with CMR findings if obtained. Also, the SCMR registry affords a platform for participating members to share images and clinical data with a global community.

On 21 July 2021, experts Chiara Bucciarelli-Ducci, MD, and Colin Berry, MD, presented the Siemens Healthineers webinar Novel Insights into MINOCA and INOCA: Resolving Diagnostic Dilemmas and discussed the potential of diagnostic imaging for risk assessment and prognosis in MINOCA and INOCA patients. This webinar highlighted the added value of CMR, CT, and Angio imaging in both acute and chronic ischemia without obstructive coronary arteries. The recording of this innovative session is now available on the SCMR Online Learning Portal.

Twitter-based #WhyCMR journal watch 📚⌚—join the online discussion!

1.    Don’t forget the myocardium in severe AS—role of CMR ☮💪

2.    Top tip: anthracycline cardiomyopathy—typically no LGE on CMR 🎩🔝

3.    Expert consensus for multimodality imaging in cardiac amyloidosis 💞👵💚🍏

4.    CMR predictors of outcome in chronic HIV infection 💔📈🦠

5.    First MAD…now tricuspid annular disjunction (TAD)—co-exist in 50% 🤡😡

6.    FT-CMR strain independently predicts mortality in severe TR 🐾💦

7.    T1 mapping characterization of pleura & pericardial effusions 💥💦🧲🗺

8.    Clinical risk prediction in LV non-compaction 💓🧲📈

9.    Do you measure epicardial adipose tissue? Empagliflozin reduces EAT in HF 🍔📏🧲

10. Vaccination-associated myocarditis in adolescents—largest CMR series 🙄💉💔

11. ECV improvement in HFpEF with anti-fibrotic agent pifenidone 🧲💊

12. Immune checkpoint inhibitor myocarditis: T₂ mapping guided management 🗺🧲🦀

The Legacy Cardiac MRI team recently commenced our Legacy Cardiac Implanted Electronic Devices (CIED) CMR service at the University Hospitals of Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW), UK. This will allow CMR scans to be performed on patients with non-MRI conditional pacemakers, ICDs, and CRT devices. In such patients, who often present complex cardiac problems, CMR can in some cases be the only test able to provide optimal diagnosis, as illustrated by our first case, which was a new diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis.

The development of a formalised protocol and consent procedure before and on the day of the procedure ensures correct patient selection and safe scanning. Optimisation of

scanner sequences significantly reduces susceptibility and off-resonance artefacts from the devices.

UHCW will be one of a small number of centres in the UK to provide this service, obviating the need for such patients to be referred further afield or to have an alternative, potentially less optimal test.

Consultant Cardiologist and Cardiology Lead for Cardiac Imaging Dr. Jamal Khan said of the achievement, “This is an exciting new venture for our Cardiac Imaging, Cardiac Devices, and MRI services and is the culmination of 2 years of collaboration. We hope that it will have a positive impact for patients across the UK Midlands region.”

The SCMR web site hosts “Case of the Week” - a case series designed to present case reports demonstrating the unique attributes of CMR in the diagnosis or management of cardiovascular disease. Each clinical presentation is followed by a brief discussion of the disease and unique role of CMR in disease diagnosis or management guidance. By nature, some of these are somewhat esoteric, but all are instructive. Recently we have published the case archive from 2019 in JCMR as a means of further enhancing the education of those interested in CMR and as a means of archiving this incredible resource from our members on PubMed. 

Last month's CMR Picture Puzzle answer:

Please use this link for a filtered PubMed list of all CMR-related manuscripts for August 2021—more than 300 in total!