Charles Schulman, MD, an ATTR-CM patient advocate and cardiologist, discusses how amyloid cardiomyopathy may be identified, including early signs like bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome.
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Transcript
Let us take a patient who had the journey that I had, that is to say, has no symptoms but has carpal tunnel syndrome.
Bilateral, both hands, over the age of 60 or 70, and has a carpal tunnel biopsy. That person should seek a cardiologist who is knowledgeable about amyloid cardiomyopathy because many community-based physicians and some cardiologists don’t know a lot about it and so don’t know the next steps.
But a knowledgeable cardiologist would order an echocardiogram, which is what I had. And since that was abnormal, the next step was a cardiac MRI. Then the specific workup for amyloid cardiomyopathy is to do a blood test, and if that’s negative, to do a nuclear scan, and that’s what should happen.
So if it doesn’t happen, then I would advise someone to seek cardiologists who are familiar with this, or work at amyloidosis centers of excellence, of which there are many.
