Prevalence of cardiac involvement in sarcoidosis detected by CMR: Initial results in 90 patients

Abstract

Background Autopsy studies report a cardiac involvement in sarcoidosis as high as 20-60%. Clinically a much lower detection rate of approximately 5% has been reported. Since cardiac events are the second most frequent cause of death, a high rate of undetected cases of cardiac involvement can be presumed, potentially leading to a fatal event as the fist manifestation. Previous studies have shown the superiority of CMR to detect cardiac involvement in sarcoidosis compared to other imaging modalities or clinical scores. We aimed at investigating the prevalence of previously unknown cardiac involvement in sarcoidosis in a caucasian population.