Cardiac Magnetic Resonance in Chagas Disease—an Update

The purpose of this paper is to review the current role of cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) in Chagas disease. CMR is crucial to detect the cardiac involvement in patients with Chagas disease given its ability to assess ventricular function and allow non-invasive tissue characterization. Chagas disease is an emerging health problem in non-endemic areas because of growing population movements. Among other imaging modalities, CMR aids in the early detection of cardiac involvement in Chagas disease, allows stage patients in the course of the cardiomyopathy, stratify patients’ prognosis, and subsequently guides management. In addition to its superior ability to assess global and regional biventricular function, CMR allows the detection and quantification of edema and myocardial fibrosis. In addition to conventional tissue characterization sequences, novel quantitative mapping techniques have emerged and are robust parameters in other inflammatory conditions. Despite its promising role to detect and graduate the inflammatory stage of the disease, no specific data in Chagas heart disease is available yet.