A Critical Review of Echocardiographic Findings for Diagnosing Cardiac Amyloidosis

This article provides a critical review of the diagnostic
value of several echocardiographic findings in cardiac
amyloidosis (CA). The importance of early and
accurate detection of CA is emphasized, considering its
challenging diagnosis and the need for a high index of
suspicion by clinicians. Echocardiography is often the
first choice for imaging assessment of cardiac structure
and function when CA is suspected. The article
encompasses several conventional echocardiographic
features and speckle-tracking echocardiographyderived deformation parameters. Some of these
indexes are grouped together to form scores, which
can improve the accuracy of diagnosing CA. However,
particularly in earlier stages, echocardiography has
low specificity to distinguish amyloid from other
hypertrophic phenotypes, highlighting the need for
correlation with clinical red flags, laboratory tests, and
additional cardiac imaging modalities.