The first artificial intelligence (AI) model of its kind, developed by Mayo Clinic and Ultromics, was found to be highly accurate in screening for cardiac amyloidosis in a new clinical trial of more than 2,600 patients.
Cardiac amyloidosis is a life-threatening condition where an abnormal protein, called amyloid, builds up in the heart, causing it to stiffen. This then leads to heart failure. Cardiac amyloidosis is often missed because the symptoms and imaging features can be similar to other heart conditions.
Mayo Clinic, investigators at the University of Chicago Medicine and collaborators around the world at other sites validated and tested the model on a large and multi-ethnic patient population and compared its abilities to other diagnostic methods for cardiac amyloidosis. The AI model was found to be highly accurate, with 85% sensitivity for correctly identifying those with the disease and 93% specificity in correctly identifying those without the disease.
The consensus guidelines currently recommend patients with suspected cardiac amyloid undergo initial clinical evaluation using ECG and echocardiography. The presence of red flag features should then prompt further testing with cardiac magnetic resonance, technetium pyrophosphate scintigraphy (Tc-PYP), and/or invasive tissue biopsy. But given its low cost and widespread availability of echo, they said it would make sense to be able to pull more precise information out of the initial gatekeeper echo evaluation.
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