The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Has Issued Care Guidelines for Cardio-Oncology & Recognized Fast-SENC (MyoStrain®) As an Alternative Diagnostic Option

MORRISVILLE, N.C., September 7, 2022 – For any technology company to be recognized in treatment guidelines before widespread adoption is an extreme honor and a credit to the strong data and principal investigators who have diligently performed MyoStrain® studies. For the first time, the ESC issued treatment guidelines for cardio-oncology acknowledging cardiotoxicity resulting from cancer treatments as a significant problem for cancer patient health and longevity.

To become a first-line diagnostic in the guidelines, any technology must be commercially available with widespread international adoption and extensive clinical data. With extensive published evidence, MyoStrain® can become first-line by providing accurate and reproducible results to help physicians rapidly detect and manage treatment effects on the heart.

"We are excited about the possibilities of MyoStrain® in cardio-oncology in helping to solve a significant problem in cancer treatment. Cancer care has made significant advances and progress, but to fully realize these advances, the heart must be protected, accurately managed, and monitored to significantly improve patient longevity," said Dr. Rafael Rivero, chief medical officer of Myocardial Solutions Inc.

In the newly released treatment guidelines, global longitudinal strain (GLS) is supplementing ejection fraction (EF) during echocardiography (ECHO) as the first-line diagnostic test, but this may be temporary because of significant limitations.

• Both ECHO GLS and EF are influenced by the same compensatory mechanisms of the heart. The volume dependency of these ECHO metrics limits detection to extensive cardiotoxic damage where the heart is no longer able to compensate for the resulting dysfunction. Alternatively, MyoStrain® quantifies regional contractions within the heart wall independent of volume changes, enabling early detection of cardiotoxicity.    
• The guidelines acknowledge that ECHO EF and GLS lack reproducibility between software versions and machines and recommend the same technology be used for all sequential patient scans. MyoStrain’s rapid 10-minute non-contrast test has demonstrated strong reproducibility between scans, operators, and MRI scanners. It is the inter-study consistency that enables monitoring of subtle changes in heart function for cancer patients during and after treatment.
• Circumferential strain, which is not commonly reported with ECHO, is equally significant to longitudinal contraction. MyoStrain® directly measures both longitudinal and circumferential strain within the myocardium to obtain a MyoHealth™ risk score and measure subtle changes in segmental function in response to cancer treatments.

The strong message from the ESC treatment guidelines is the need to follow cancer patients from baseline, during treatment, and throughout survivorship. The unmet medical need is to monitor patients’ cardiac risks and diseases to detect cardiac cardiotoxicity early before damage occurs. This is because dysfunction in the absence of symptoms is usually reversible.

As MyoStrain^® is adopted more widely, there will be additional data demonstrating the need to quantify both regional longitudinal and circumferential strain, as well as the accuracy and reproducibility of MyoHealth™. Thus, MSI management believes the new ESC treatment guidelines help position MyoStrain^® to become a first-line diagnostic test as adoption grows.