Myocardial infarction after coronary revascularization: role of cardiovascular magnetic resonance oedema imaging

doi:10.1016/j.ehj.2004.08.028 Myocardial infarction after coronary revascularization: role of cardiovascular magnetic resonance oedema imaging – Reply Dear Editor, We find the recent study by Abdel-Aty et al. [1] very interesting and we thank them for their comment. In our study [2], we applied strict criteria in order to exclude patients with previous myocardial infarctions. The finding that the higher the biochemical marker level the greater the amount of infarcted tissue, supported our assumption of a causal connection be-tween peri-operative myocardial infarc-tion and post-operative elevation of biochemical markers. However, contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging may distinguish between viable and non-viable regions throughout infarct healing [3], but does not differentiate between acute and chronic infarction [4]. Since not all patients with previous infarctions have a history of myocardial infarction or evidence of infarction on the ECG, echo-cardiography or ventriculography, we be-lieve that the newly described imaging approach [1] may be a valuable contribu-tion for the future assessment of patients with elevated cardiac markers after coro-nary revascularization