Aims: Fabry disease may be difficult to differentiate from other causes of left ventricular hypertrophy such as other myocardial storage diseases (including amyloidosis), hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), or hypertensive heart disease (HHD). We sought to determine simple criteria to best differentiate the above mentioned cardiac diseases.
Methods and results: All patients in a six-year time period with left ventricular hypertrophy due to Fabry disease (13 patients), biopsy proven cardiac amyloidosis (16 patients), non-obstructive HCM (17 patients), and 22 randomly selected patients with advanced HHD were compared. Retrospective analysis of clinical characteristics, findings of electrocardiogram (ECG) and echocardiography by blind review was performed.
Results: No single clinical characteristic or findings of ECG or echocardiography could reliably differentiate between the various diseases. Increased echogenicity/granular sparkling, valvular abnormalities, abnormal renal function, and diastolic function were not helpful discriminators. In a univariate analysis, four criteria (acroparesthesia, anhydrosis, absence of hypertension and presence of Sokolow criteria for left ventricular hypertrophy in the ECG) were significant for Fabry disease. By logistic regression analysis, the following most suitable discriminative parameters were identified: hypertension in HHD (specificity 82%), orthostasis and/or pericardial effusion for amyloidosis (specificity 93%), papillary muscle anomaly in non-obstructive HCM (specificity 92%), and Fabry disease if neither hypertension orthostatis, pericardial effusion nor a papillary muscle anomaly was present (specificity 87%).
Conclusion: A combination of symptoms, echocardiographic findings and ECG in unexplained left ventricular hypertrophy may help to differentiate amyloidosis, non-obstructive HCM and hypertensive heart disease from Fabry disease. The results of this preliminary study will have to be confirmed in a prospective study.