July 11, 2023 | Cardiovascular Business
For years, cardiac amyloidosis was a rare and often fatal disease that had no treatment, so it was not front and center in many cardiology conference sessions or discussions about cardiac imaging. However, that changed in May 2019 with the FDA clearance of the Pfizer drugs Vyndaqel (tafamidis meglumine) and Vyndamax (tafamidis), the first pharmaceutical treatments for amyloidosis. This helped lead to an explosion of interest in cardiology to screen for these cardiomyopathy patients so that they could be treated.
In the past four years, amyloidosis has come out of the shadows to the forefront of cardiology education as hospitals and clinics seek more information on how to image and test these patients. This is particularly important because not only is a diagnosis for amyloid needed, but the subtype also needs to be determined.