Old wine in a new bottle: non-invasive quantitative evaluation of pulmonary congestion with pulmonary blood volume index by cardiac magnetic resonance

This editorial refers to ‘Pulmonary blood volume index as a quantitative biomarker of haemodynamic congestion in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy’, by F. Ricci et al., pp. 1368--1376. Since haemodynamic congestion usually precedes clinical symptoms and represents a major parameter impacting the treatment and prognosis of patients with different kind of heart diseases, its assessment has become one of the new spotlights of modern cardiology. Currently, several methods are used for the evaluation of the filling state, each with its strengths and drawbacks. To date, the gold standard for evaluating pulmonary congestion is right heart catheterization (RHC), but its invasive nature limits its use in clinical practice. Echocardiography is the...