Kumar A, et al. - Researchers investigated the effect of skeletal muscle size on mortality in 567 prospectively enrolled patients without heart failure (HF; n=364), with HF with reduced ejection fraction (n=111), or with HF with preserved ejection fraction (n=92), who underwent cardiac MRI. Via manual tracing of major thoracic muscle groups on axial chest MRIs, they evaluated skeletal muscle cross-sectional area. A latent factor underlying the shared variability in thoracic muscle cross-sectional area was identified by using factor analysis. They assessed all-cause mortality (median follow up: 36.4 months) in relation to these measurements using Cox regression. They noted an independent association of axial muscle size—particularly smaller size of the pectoralis major—with a higher risk of mortality in patients with and without HF.