Right ventricular edema complicating acute inferior myocardial infarction as demonstrated by T2-weighted cardiovascular magnetic resonance.

Right ventricular (RV) involvement after acute myocardial infarction (MI) carries an adverse prognosis, but in the majority of patients RV function recovers fully over time.1 It is believed that the lower oxygen requirement of the RV and higher collateral flow make the RV more resistant to ischemia. In the absence of infarction, myocardial ischemia leads to intracellular and subsequently extracellular edema, which may contribute to reversible RV dysfunction after acute MI. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is the optimal tool to image the RV because it is not constrained by imaging windows or insufficient spatial resolution. CMR can assess RV function, volume, and infarction.2,3 Furthermore, tissue edema can be depicted in vivo using T2-weighted CMR methods, but there are no reports to date describing RV edema by T2-weighted CMR.