What is the role and incremental diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic value of endomyocardial biopsy in adult and pediatric cardiovascular disease?
Endomyocardial biopsy remains a controversial but necessary tool for diagnosing specific myocardial disorders that cannot be identified through noninvasive testing.
The role of endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) in the diagnosis and treatment of adult and pediatric cardiovascular disease remains controversial, and the practice varies widely even among cardiovascular centers of excellence. A need for EMB exists because specific myocardial disorders that have unique prognoses and treatment are seldom diagnosed by noninvasive testing.1 Informed clinical decision making that weighs the risks of EMB against the incremental diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic value of the procedure is especially challenging for nonspecialists because the relevant published literature is usually cited according to specific cardiac diseases, which are only diagnosed after EMB
Cooper et al. (Wed,) studied this question.