Cardiovascular Complications and Management in Sarcoidosis: A review

Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory autoimmune disease that affects many organs in the body. When sarcoidosis affects the heart, patients are often highly symptomatic and present with heart failure, symptomatic conduction abnormalities, ventricular arrhythmias, or even sudden cardiac death. Diagnosis is a combination of symptoms, the synthesis of information on disease involvement of other organ systems, electrocardiogram and echocardiogram data, and advanced imaging. In a minority of cases where the diagnosis is in doubt and extracardiac organs are not involved or cannot be biopsied, endomyocardial biopsy data may be required and would typically show noncaseating granulomas with negative staining for potentially causative organisms. The treatment of sarcoidosis involves systemic steroids with or without other immunomodulatory medications, and continued imaging follow-up to document either improvement or continued inflammatory activity. For advanced cases, therapies including heart pumps and heart transplants can be offered. This paper seeks to discuss the disease epidemiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and treatment.