Cardiac sarcoidosis: An important niche for PET, but a journey just begun

Excerpt

Heart failure! From the victim’s perspective, the diagnosis has evolved to be as feared as cancer. It is a life-changing diagnosis, a formidable enemy, often a drawn-out “death sentence”. It affects quality of life, life expectancy, family finances, compliance with multiple medications often taken 2 or 3 times per day, consideration of hardware implants, and frequent tests to help determine etiology and assess response to interventions. From a cardiology practice perspective, heart failure has become a major focus of attention. In the United States alone, some 5.7 million people have heart failure, with approximately 550,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The cost of caring for people with heart failure exceeds $30 billion annually.1 It should not be surprising that heart failure has become as important a focus for cardiologists in the twenty-first century as coronary artery disease was in the late twentieth century. …