ABSTRACT
While inflammatory processes in the cardiovascular system are common, their implications are manifold, and often these processes are incompletely understood. Inflammation is certainly the main mechanism causing tissue damage in the setting of myocarditis. Myocarditis represents a large and heterogeneous group of diseases with various etiologies including viral as well as parasitic infections (such as Chagas’ disease), autoimmune reactions, toxins, electric shock, and others (Sagar et al., 2012).
The method of choice to establish the diagnosis and type of myocarditis is based on immunohistology, which is performed on endomyocardial biopsies (EMB). There is thus general agreement that an invasive approach is needed to work up patients with known or suspected myocarditis and to establish the final diagnosis (Cooper et al., 2007). However, selecting patients to undergo EMB is not an easy task, and the patients’ clinical symptoms, physical findings, ECG-changes, and cardiac imaging information are typically required for this decision.
