MRI in patients with pacemakers?First global consensus recommendationsfrom radiologists and cardiologists.

Under the title “MR Imaging in Patients with Cardiac Pacemakers and Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators”, this issue of Röfo – simultaneously with the journal of the German Cardiac Society “Der Kardiologe” – presents a consensus paper of the German Roentgen Society and the German Cardiac Society [1, 2] that was jointly written by the authors in radiology and cardiology but does not exclusively address cardiac MRI. This publication relates to MR imaging of all regions of the body. In Germany and internationally the number of MRI examinations is increasing: 1,008,944 examinations were performed on patients receiving inpatient treatment in 2005 while 1,767,005 examinations were performed in 2013 (DRG hospitals). This development can be attributed to our aging population as well as to new indications for MRI including: Analyses of tissue composition and function, for example in the liver [3, 4] and the heart [5, 6]; multiparametric analyses of MR perfusion, e. g. in treated brain tumors [7]; new organs such as the lung [8]; dedicated examinations for intervention planning and operation monitoring [9– 11]; as well as MRI-guided interventions [12– 16]. Implants must always be considered in all of these MRI examinations even if the reason for the examination request is not related to an implant. The involvement of cardiology in this case is not based on the medical issue but rather on the type of implant. Expertise in cardiology is required when dealing with cardiac pacemakers (PM) and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD). Background