Current diagnostic strategies for dilated cardiomyopathy: a comparison of imaging techniques

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is generally thought as a final common pathway of several conditions leading to the same clinical phenotype. Multiple imaging modalities play a fundamental role in recognizing the underlying pathological substrate in DCM.

Areas covered: Echocardiography represents the first reliable and easily accessible diagnostic tool, allowing the identification of associated cardiac abnormalities, such as valve disease and highlighting features associated with an adverse prognosis. Recent advances in technology such as strain analysis and 3D-echocardiography have improved the diagnostic and prognostic capabilities of this technique. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is considered the gold standard for an accurate and reproducible assessment of ventricular volumes and ejection fraction. In addition, CMR allows us to perform tissue characterization that, through new sophisticated sequences, could be obtained even without gadolinium. Nuclear images could be useful to identify specific causes of left ventricular dysfunction, such as cardiac sarcoidosis and amyloidosis. Finally, endomyocardial biopsy is generally performed if acute myocarditis is suspected in high-risk patients.

Expert commentary: Strengths and limitations are different for every method, but multiparametric evaluation of patients and family members could progressively improve current understanding of the disease. This is fundamental to specifically target therapy, allowing us to improve patients’ prognosis.

KEYWORDS:

• Cardiac magnetic resonance
• dilated cardiomyopathy
• echocardiography
• future perspectives
• integrated imaging
• prognosis

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.