Myocardial infarction after coronary revascularization: role of cardiovascular magnetic resonance oedema imaging.

We find the recent study by Abdel-Aty et al. [1] very interesting and we thank them for their comment. In our study [2], we applied strict criteria in order to exclude patients with previous myocardial infarctions. The finding that the higher the biochemical marker level the greater the amount of infarcted tissue, supported our assumption of a causal connection between peri-operative myocardial infarction and post-operative elevation of biochemical markers. However, contrastenhanced magnetic resonance imaging may distinguish between viable and nonviable regions throughout infarct healing [3], but does not differentiate between acute and chronic infarction [4]. Since not all patients with previous infarctions have a history of myocardial infarction or evidence of infarction on the ECG, echocardiography or ventriculography, we believe that the newly described imaging approach [1] may be a valuable contribution for the future assessment of patients with elevated cardiac markers after coronary revascularization.