Description
Diagnosed late, almost always
Cardiac sarcoidosis is typically diagnosed after a complete heart block in a young patient, or after a ventricular arrhythmia, or at post-mortem. It is rarely diagnosed from the finding that should have triggered suspicion months earlier — because that finding looks unremarkable unless you are already thinking of it.
These 392 pages are largely about lowering that threshold.
The trigger findings
Unexplained conduction disease under fifty. Ventricular arrhythmia without an obvious substrate. Regional wall motion abnormality in a non-coronary distribution. Unexplained cardiomyopathy in a patient with pulmonary findings nobody connected. Each is common enough to be dismissed and specific enough to act on.
Diagnosis and its difficulties
Cardiac MRI and FDG-PET, their respective roles, and the preparation protocol for PET that determines whether the study is interpretable at all — a technical detail that invalidates a substantial share of scans. Endomyocardial biopsy and its sampling problem. The diagnostic criteria and why they disagree with each other.
Beyond sarcoid
Across the 31 chapters: cardiac involvement in systemic lupus, rheumatoid disease, systemic sclerosis, vasculitis, IgG4-related disease, eosinophilic myocarditis, and amyloid where it overlaps with inflammatory disease. Immunosuppression decisions and device candidacy close the volume.
Placement
Advanced tier, recommended alongside imaging and heart failure tracks. Also recommended to rheumatology members, who see the systemic disease long before the heart declares itself.
PDF, lifetime access, from CardiologyBooks.com.
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