Facing the challenges of ventricular hypertrophy: The eyes don’t lie

We describe the case of a 47-year-old man with new-onset heart failure who was found to have severe biventricular wall thickening. We present comprehensive data from invasive and non-invasive multimodality imaging, genetic and histologic tests, and briefly describe their importance in the final diag...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Patrícia Rodrigues, Mário Santos, António Marinho, Sofia Cabral, Miguel Vieira, Hipólito Reis, Paulo Palma, Severo Torres
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2014-10-01
Series:Revista Portuguesa de Cardiologia
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0870255114002029
Description
Summary:We describe the case of a 47-year-old man with new-onset heart failure who was found to have severe biventricular wall thickening. We present comprehensive data from invasive and non-invasive multimodality imaging, genetic and histologic tests, and briefly describe their importance in the final diagnosis.To our knowledge, this is the first case of the Portuguese variant of familial amyloid polyneuropathy presenting with heart failure in the fifth decade of life.This is an unusual case report, but also an illustration of how to approach any patient with suspected infiltrative cardiomyopathy. Resumo: Descrevemos o caso de um doente do sexo masculino de 47 anos, com insuficiência cardíaca de novo, que apresentava marcado aumento da espessura da parede de ambos os ventrículos. Apresentamos dados dos exames de imagem, estudo genético e análise histológica que nos guiaram no diagnóstico, explicando o nosso precurso pelos diagnósticos diferenciais e a interpretação dos diferentes testes.Tanto quanto sabemos, é o primeiro caso descrito de um doente com a variante portuguesa da polineuropatia amiloidótica familiar que se apresenta com insuficiência cardíaca na quinta década de vida.Este é um caso clínico invulgar, mas também um exemplo ilustrativo da abordagem de um doente com suspeita de cardiomiopatia infiltrativa. Keywords: Heart failure, Ventricular wall thickening, Infiltrative cardiomyopathy, Familial amyloid polyneuropathy, Echocardiography, Palavras-chave: Insuficiência cardíaca, Hipertrofia ventricular, Cardiomiopatia infiltrativa, Polineuropatia amiloidótica familiar, Ecocardiografia
ISSN:0870-2551