IMR Press / RCM / Volume 23 / Issue 6 / DOI: 10.31083/j.rcm2306201
Open Access Review
Echocardiography in Anderson-Fabry Disease
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1 Department of Emergency Medicine, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, 00168 Rome, Italy
2 Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 00168 Rome, Italy
3 Cardiovascular Department, San Donato Hospital, 52100 Arezzo, Italy
4 Multimodality Cardiac Imaging Unit, IRCCS Policlinico San Donato, San Donato Milanese, 20097 Milan, Italy
5 Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, 00168 Rome, Italy
*Correspondence: francesca.graziani@policlinicogemelli.it (Francesca Graziani)
Academic Editor: Jerome L. Fleg
Rev. Cardiovasc. Med. 2022, 23(6), 201; https://doi.org/10.31083/j.rcm2306201
Submitted: 25 January 2022 | Revised: 17 April 2022 | Accepted: 27 April 2022 | Published: 31 May 2022
Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by IMR Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Abstract

Echocardiography is the most common diagnostic tool to screen for Fabry cardiomyopathy as it is fast, non-invasive, low-cost, widely available, easily applicable and reproducible. Echocardiography is the first-line investigation, being useful in all the stages of the disease: (1) in gene-positive patients, to unveil signs of early cardiac involvement and allowing timely treatment; (2) in patients with overt cardiomyopathy to estimate the severity of cardiac involvement, the possible related complications, and the effect of treatment. Recently, advanced echocardiographic techniques, such as speckle tracking analysis, are offering new insights in the assessment of Fabry disease patients and in the differential diagnosis of cardiomyopathies with hypertrophic phenotype. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview on the cardiac structural and functional abnormalities described in Fabry disease by means of echocardiography.

Keywords
Fabry disease
lysosomal storage disorders
cardiac imaging
echocardiography
cardiomyopathy
tissue Doppler
speckle tracking
Figures
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