Safe Follow-Up after Endovascular Aortic Repair with Unenhanced MRI: The SAFEVAR Study

We aimed to investigate whether unenhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could represent a safe and highly sensitive tool for endoleak screening in patients treated with endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) using computed tomography angiography (CTA) as a reference standard. Patients who underwent CTA for EVAR follow-up at our institution were prospectively enrolled. All MRI examinations were performed with a 1.5 T unit. The true-FISP and HASTE sequences of the MRI scans were assessed for the presence of hyperintensity within the aneurysm sac outside the graft, whereas phase-contrast through-plane sequences were used for blood flow quantification. We included 45 patients, 5 (11%) of whom were female. The median age was 73 years (IQR 68 − 78 years). Among our patients, 19 (42%) were positive for endoleaks at CTA, of whom 13 (68%) had type II endoleaks and 6 (32%) had type I endoleaks. There were no significant differences in age, sex, aneurysm type, prosthesis type, or contrast-to-noise ratio between hyperintensity and thrombus between patients with and without endoleaks (p > 0.300). The combined evaluation of true-FISP and HASTE yielded 100% sensitivity (95% CI: 79–100%) and 19% specificity (95% CI: 7–40%). Patients with a positive CTA had a median thrombus flow of 0.06 L/min (IQR 0.03−0.23 L/min), significantly greater than that of patients with a negative CTA (p = 0.007). Setting a threshold at 0.01 L/min, our MRI protocol yielded 100% sensitivity, 56% specificity, and an AUC of 0.76 (95% CI 0.60−0.91). In conclusion, unenhanced MRI has perfect sensitivity for endoleak detection, although with subpar specificity that could be improved with phase-contrast flow analysis.