Arie Simon Bode1,2, Robrecht Nils Planken3,
Bastiaan Versluis1, Joachim E. Wildberger1,4, Jan H.
Tordoir2,5, Tim Leiner1,5
1Radiology, Maastricht University
Medical Center, Maastricht, Netherlands; 2Surgery, Maastricht
University Medical Center, Maastricht, Netherlands; 3Radiology,
Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands; 4Cardiovascular
Research Institute Maastricht, Maastricht, , Netherlands; 5Cardiovascular
Research Institute Maastricht, Maastricht, Netherlands
Knowledge
of upper extremity vascular geometry prior to dialysis access creation
improves clinical outcome. Purpose of the present study was to compare a
non-contrast enhanced (NCE) balanced TFE sequence with the current standard
of reference, CE-MRA. In 10 healthy volunteers and 5 patients with ESRD we
obtained both NCE-bTFE and CE-MRA images. Although CE-MRA was superior for
arterial depiction NCE-bTFE yielded images of diagnostic quality in the vast
majority of subjects. Furthermore, NCE-bTFE enabled visualization of
significantly more venous segments compared compared to CE-MRA. bTFE proved
to be an attractive alternative for pre-operative vascular mapping prior to
vascular access creation.