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Cardiac involvement is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in subclinical systemic sclerosis (SSc). There are, however, no effective methods for detecting cardiac involvement in a general, asymptomatic SSc cohort. We aim to characterize SSc-primary heart involvement (SSc-pHI) through cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), exploring the relationship between SSc-pHI and skin involvement by modified Rodnan skin score (mRSS). We found that 71% of SSC patients had Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) fibrosis, and 75% and 46% had anomalous native T1 and extracellular-volume fraction (ECV). In addition, SSc-pHI is related to the severity of skin involvement.
Zhao et al. (Wed,) studied this question.