What is the clinical merit of endomyocardial biopsy in the diagnosis and treatment of myocardial diseases?
While currently overused with limited diagnostic validity, endomyocardial biopsy is expected to become crucial for linking basic science and clinical understanding of myocardial diseases.
At this time, endomyocardial biopsy has proven validity as a diagnostic method in few circumstances. However, it is overused. In the near term, the extent of its use should be modified by knowledge of its therapeutic relevance in patients with myocarditis. In the long term, numerous new techniques for studying pathophysiology at the subcellular and molecular levels will demand a central role for endomyocardial biopsy in the diagnosis, treatment and fundamental understanding of myocardial diseases. We believe that endomyocardial biopsy will serve as an indispensible link between basic scientists and clinicians in the effort to describe disease mechanisms.
Mason et al. (Mon,) studied this question.