Myocardial involvement is common in patients with systemic sclerosis and is known to cause myocardial fibrosis and subtle ventricular dysfunction. Both can be characterized by novel CMR methods like native T1-mapping, ECV quantification or LV deformation imaging. However, the temporal onset of myocardial fibrosis and functional impairment during the progression of the disease is still unknown. Therefore, we investigated the presence of subclinical functional and fibrotic myocardial involvement in patients with very early diagnosis of systemic sclerosis and found that the expansion of ECV can be detected before LV functional impairment, assessed by CMR feature tracking, can be observed.
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