Evaluation of the Relationship Among Pulmonary Artery Pressure with Serum Ferritin Level and CMR T2* in Thalassemia Major.

BACKGROUND Pulmonary hypertension is one of the most common cardiac complications among patients with β-thalassemia major (β-TM). The aim of this study is to investigate the correlation of pulmonary artery pressure (PAP), serum ferritin level, and cardiac T2* MRI in patients with β-TM. METHOD This cross-sectional study was performed on 50 patients older than 7 years old. Echocardiography, electrocardiography, and cardiac T2* MRI were performed on all patients and their serum ferritin levels were measured. Based on the echocardiographic the patients were divided into two groups of PAP>30 and 30, the means of age, serum ferritin level, and P-pulmonary were significantly higher than patients with PAP 30mmHg, CMRI *T2 had higher accuracy (80%), sensitivity (65%), and specificity (90%) compared to the measurement of serum ferritin levels. CONCLUSION The PAP was positively correlated with serum ferritin levels and negatively with T2MRI. The accuracy of 80% for T2MRI as a method to diagnose or even anticipate PH among patients with TM suggested that this method is a useful and accurate method of PH diagnosis and can be used as an alternative among clinicians.