Cardiac amyloidosis in a heart transplant patient - A case report and retrospective analysis of amyloidosis evolution

Abstract

Cardiac amyloidosis is a very rare cause of heart failure in heart transplant recipients but an important differential diagnosis in cases of progressive cardiac failure. We report a 72-year-old male patient with the diagnosis of senile systemic amyloidosis (SSA) in a transplanted heart 15 years after transplantation by the initial diagnosis of the dilated cardiomyopathy. Additionally performed immunohistochemical analysis with anti-transthyretin antibody of the cardiac biopsies of the last 15 years enabled the possibility to show the evolution of this disease with characteristic biphasic pattern.