The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) has released a new guide for imaging patients with Chagas disease, an infectious parasitic illness transmitted by insects. The document was published in the January issue of the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography.
The disease is common in many Latin American countries as well as in the southern U.S. Most patients experience only minor symptoms, but 20% to 30% develop chronic heart disease as a result of the illness.
The guidance is a collaboration between the ASE, the InterAmerican Association of Echocardiography (ECOSIAC), and the Cardiovascular Imaging Department of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology (DIC-SBC). A writing group led by Dr. Harry Acquatella of Centro Medico de Caracas in Caracas, Venezuela, and Dr. Federico Asch of MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, developed it (JASE, Vol. 31:1, pp. 3-25).
The document recommends that patients living in (or having migrated from) at-risk areas for Chagas disease who present with abnormalities on an electrocardiogram or have heart failure, abnormal left ventricular function, or aneurysms should be tested for the illness via cardiac imaging procedures such as echocardiography or cardiac MRI.
"This document brings together experts from Latin America with U.S.-based clinicians to raise awareness of this not-so-rare-anymore cardiac disease, and to provide guidance on how different cardiac imaging modalities can impact the outcome of patients at risk or infected," Asch said in a statement released by the ASE.
