Background: Diagnostic and therapeutic advances have led to much greater awareness of transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CA). We aimed to characterize changes in the clinical phenotype of patients diagnosed with ATTR-CA over the past 20 years.
Methods: This is a retrospective observational cohort study of all patients referred to the National Amyloidosis Centre (2002-2021) in whom ATTR-CA was a differential diagnosis.
Results: We identified 2995 patients referred with suspected ATTR-CA, of whom 1967 had a diagnosis of ATTR-CA confirmed. Analysis by 5-year periods revealed an incremental increase in referrals, with higher proportions of patients having been referred after bone scintigraphy and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (2% versus 34% versus 51% versus 55%, chi-square P<0.001). This was accompanied by a greater number of ATTR-CA diagnoses, predominantly of the wild-type nonhereditary form, which is now the most commonly diagnosed form of ATTR-CA (0% versus 54% versus 67% versus 66%, chi-square P<0.001). Over time, the median duration of associated symptoms before diagnosis fell from 36 months between 2002 and 2006 to 12 months between 2017 and 2021 (Mann-Whitney P<0.001), and a greater proportion of patients had early-stage disease at diagnosis across the 5-year periods (National Amyloidosis Centre stage 1: 34% versus 42% versus 44% versus 53%, chi-square P<0.001). This was associated with more favorable echocardiographic parameters of structure and function, including lesser interventricular septal thickness (18.0±3.8 mm versus 17.2±2.6 mm versus 16.9±2.3 mm versus 16.6±2.4 mm, P=0.01) and higher left ventricular ejection fraction (46.0%±8.9% versus 46.8%±11.0% versus 47.8%±11.0% versus 49.5%±11.1%, P<0.001). Mortality decreased progressively during the study period (2007-2011 versus 2012-2016: hazard ratio, 1.57 [95% CI, 1.31-1.89], P<0.001; and 2012-2016 versus 2017-2021: hazard ratio, 1.89 [95% CI, 1.55-2.30], P<0.001). The proportion of patients enrolled into clinical trials and prescribed disease-modifying therapy increased over the 20-year period, but even when censoring at the trial or medication start date, year of diagnosis remained a significant predictor of mortality (2012-2016 versus 2017-2021: hazard ratio, 1.05 [95% CI, 1.03-1.07], P<0.001).
Conclusions: There has been a substantial increase in ATTR-CA diagnoses, with more patients being referred after local advanced cardiac imaging. Patients are now more often diagnosed at an earlier stage of the disease, with substantially lower mortality. These changes may have important implications for initiation and outcome of therapy and urgently need to be factored into clinical trial design.
Keywords: amyloidosis; prognosis; transthyretin.