Myocardial bridging in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is not associated with late gadolinium enhancement at cardiac magnetic resonance imaging

Background Coronary arteries and their major branches are usually located on the surface of the heart. Infrequently, one portion of coronary arteries is situated intra-myocardially, a condition termed myocardial bridging (MyB). Generally, its prevalence is reported to be around 15% but there is evidence that in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) this phenomen is far more frequent with an incidence of up to 41%. Although the effect of MyB is mostly in systoly (not-perfused anyway), its impact on myocardium to induce myocardial fibrosis due to chronic prolonged hypo-perfusion is unknown. Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is able to detect focal myocardial fibrosis. Therefore, we sought to investigate the relationship between MyB and focal LGE often seen in HCM.