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Role of echocardiography in assessing cardiac amyloidoses: a systematic review

  • Jun KoyamaEmail author
  • Masatoshi Minamisawa
  • Yoshiki Sekijima
  • Koichiro Kuwahara
  • Tsutomu Katsuyama
  • Kazutoshi Maruyama
Review Article
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Abstract

Cardiac amyloidosis is a manifestation of one of several systemic amyloidoses, and is characterized by increased left-ventricular (LV) wall thickness and normal or decreased LV cavity size. Congestive heart failure in cardiac amyloidosis is characterized by a predominant diastolic LV dysfunction, and systolic dysfunction occurs only in late-stage disease. Echocardiography is a noninvasive, reproducible method for assessing cardiac morphology and function in cardiac amyloidosis, and some echocardiographic indices are prognostic for amyloidoses. This review describes the advances in echocardiography and its role in the diagnosis and management of cardiac amyloidoses. Our review suggests that LV longitudinal function and the cyclic variation of myocardial integrated backscatter may be the best predictors of adverse outcomes. In the future, new echocardiographic techniques, such as fully automated echocardiogram interpretation, should provide further useful information for assessing cardiac function and prognosis in cardiac amyloidosis patients.

Keywords

Cardiac amyloidosis Echocardiography Myocardial scintigraphy Transthyretin 
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Notes

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

Jun Koyama, Masatoshi Minamisawa, Yoshiki Sekijima, Koichiro Kuwahara, Tsutomu Katsuyama, and Kazutoshi Maruyama declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Japanese Society of Echocardiography 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Internal MedicineMaruko Central HospitalUedaJapan
  2. 2.Department of Cardiovascular MedicineShinshu University School of MedicineMatsumotoJapan
  3. 3.Department of Medicine (Neurology and Rheumatology)Shinshu University School of MedicineMatsumotoJapan

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