Rahul Rathod
Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, USA
Title: Advanced imaging in Fontans: How does the data help us?
Biography
Biography: Rahul Rathod
Abstract
Patients with functional single ventricle congenital heart disease have complex anatomy and physiology. The final surgical pathway often culminates in the Fontan procedure. Despite improving clinical outcomes in the first several years of life, adverse outcomes are common and increase in frequency as these patients become older. These adverse outcomes include death and significant co-morbidities including protein-losing enteropathy, exercise intolerance, heart failure, arrhythmias, liver cirrhosis, thrombus, and stroke. The purpose of this talk would be a multi-modality review of advanced imaging in patients late after the Fontan operation. Non-invasive parameters that have been shown to be predictive of adverse outcomes would be highlighted and receive the most in depth review. This talk would include review of the utility of echocardiography, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, and cardiac CT. The strengths and weaknesses of each modality would be reviewed in detail. Illustrative imaging case examples would be scattered throughout the talk. This would include some advanced techniques as well, including ventricular strain analysis, myocardial viability assessment, aortopulmonary collateral flow quantification, and 4D flow analysis. In addition to the cardiac imaging described above, a brief review of the non-invasive modalities to evaluate Fontan associated liver disease will also be discussed, including echocardiographic and magnetic resonance based liver elastography.