Matthew Lander, MD: Screening for Cardiac Sarcoidosis

Sarcoidosis is a rare condition characterized by the development of granulomas, often presenting in the lungs and lymph nodes of a patient, leading to inhibited ariways, inflammation, and fibrosis of tissue. While the lungs are generally the predominant location affected, sarcoidosis granulomas can also occur in other organs.

Cardiac sarcoidosis is less common and the understanding around it is limited, though, the presence of the disease in the circulatory system has severe implications, which Matthew Lander, MD, Advanced Heart Failure, Pulmonary Hypertension and Transplant Cardiologist at Allegheny Health Network explained in an interview with HCPLive.

"When we talk about cardiac involvement, we're usually talking about a few different processes," he said. "We're usually talking about how it's affecting the electrical system, and conduction disease can occur, oftentimes as the first indication of any sort of cardiac involvement."

Sarcoidosis is typically discovered when investigating the cause of specific symptoms, such as arrhythmia, heart failure, or other cardiac complications, whether they're thought to be related to an existing condition or not, Lander shared. Some screening practices have been identified to hone in on diagnosis and then, determine the appropriate treatment.

"We find, in our patients that have heart failure, or reduced ejection fraction, that, that certainly can have a specific pattern on imaging, on echocardiogram, on cardiac MRI," he explained.

PET scanning, in particular, has provided advancement in the diagnosis process, which has offered a new perspective on cardiac sarcoidosis for clinicians.

"The testing modality that's changing how we view this disease a lot is PET scanning, and specifically with a tracer called FDG, which sometimes allows us to find areas of inflammation in the heart," Lander said.