Children with kawasaki disease present elevated stiffness of great arteries: Phase-contrast MRI study

BACKGROUND Patients with diagnosed Kawasaki disease (KD) are known to develop extracardiac vascular lesions and are prone to accelerated stiffening of medium-size arteries. PURPOSE To noninvasively evaluate great vessel (central aorta and main pulmonary artery (MPA)) stiffness using phase-contrast MRI (PC-MRI). STUDY TYPE Retrospective review. SUBJECTS Thirty-three patients with previously diagnosed KD and 15 control subjects underwent PC-MRI evaluation. FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE A free-breathing PC-MRI sequence was applied with Cartesian encoding and retrospective sorting using a 1.5 or 3.0T system. ASSESSMENT We evaluated regionally specific vessel stiffness using pulse-wave velocity (PWV) and relative area change (RAC) at the ascending aorta, descending aorta, and MPA. STATISTICAL TESTS Hemodynamics among patients with KD and controls were compared using Student's t-test, Wilcoxon Rank-sum, and χ2 . Additional group-specific comparisons were performed using Kruskal-Wallis or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). RESULTS Patients with KD showed elevated PWV in both ascending (5.0 ± 1.2 vs. 2.4 ± 0.5, P