Lymph Vessel Proliferation on Cardiac Biopsy May Help in the Diagnosis of Cardiac Sarcoidosis

摘要

BackgroundThe diagnosis of cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) is challenging because endomyocardial biopsy has only a 20% to 30% sensitivity rate for diagnosis and it presents with similar clinical features of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). Lymphatic vessel proliferation in pulmonary sarcoidosis has been previously demonstrated. In this study, we compared endomyocardial biopsy samples obtained from patients with CS and DCM to determine whether lymph vessel counts using D2‐40 immunostaining can be utilized as a complementary tool to distinguish CS from DCM.