This symposium summary highlights the need for well-designed research to evaluate the efficacy of therapeutic apheresis in cardiovascular diseases such as dilated cardiomyopathy and peripheral vascular disease.
Evidence insufficient for therapeutic apheresis in dilated cardiomyopathy or peripheral vascular disease; leaves open questions for future trials.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in collaboration with the American Society for Apheresis, convened a State of the Science Symposium in November of 2012 due to the expanding application of therapeutic apheresis despite the lack of well-designed research to address its efficacy. This article reviews the opportunities that were presented at this meeting in the area of cardiovascular disease (CVD), specifically the use of columns to adsorb autoantibodies in dilated cardiomyopathy or damaging lipids in peripheral vascular disease. Understanding how absorption of these pathologic substances alters the inflammatory response in these disorders is important for the application of these technologies to the treatment of CVD.
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Winters et al. (2014) studied this question.
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