Cardiac involvement is one of the most serious internal organ involvements and the leading cause of death in SSc patients. The prevalence is 14% by clinical observation and even higher by autopsy Many SSc patients with cardiac involvement are asymptomatic or underdiagnosed. The condition may progress silently to overt clinical manifestations, including systolic and/or diastolic dysfunction, myocardial ischaemia, myocardial hypertrophy, heart failure, pericardial effusion and arrhythmias. Early detection of cardiac abnormalities is therefore very important. We evaluate cardiac involvement by echocardiography, MR, SPECT, and coronary CT.

With this study we aim at studying the genetic background of the disease to deepen in its pathogenesis to be able to establish links between genetic variations and different clinic-biologic patterns. This research is based on a multicentric study and it is led by Prof. Javier Martín from the "Instituto López-Neyra" of Parasitology, CSIC (Granada). We contribute to it by sending samples from our cohort of patients along with the clinical data.

Cardiac involvement is one of the most serious internal organ involvements and the leading cause of death in SSc patients. The prevalence is 14% by clinical observation and even higher by autopsy Many SSc patients with cardiac involvement are asymptomatic or underdiagnosed. The condition may progress silently to overt clinical manifestations, including systolic and/or diastolic dysfunction, myocardial ischaemia, myocardial hypertrophy, heart failure, pericardial effusion and arrhythmias. Early detection of cardiac abnormalities is therefore very important. We evaluate cardiac involvement by echocardiography, MR, SPECT, and coronary CT.

This multicentric study includes 14 hospitals with a cohort of 916 scleroderma patients. Its main goal consists in determining both the prognosis factors and the survival of these patients.