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Fat infiltration in the heart
Liron PantanowitzDepartment
of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical
School, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston MA 02215, USA
Correspondence to: Dr Pantanowitz lpantanowitz@hotmail.com
Accepted 21
November 2000
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Current
teaching is that fatty infiltration into the myocardium (lipomatosis or
cor adiposum) rarely affects cardiac function. This may not be entirely
true. Rupture during acute myocardial infarction has certainly been
shown to be more common in the fatty heart.1 Fat
infiltrating in the region of the conduction system is responsible for
causing sudden death.2 Furthermore, it is possible for
lipomatous hypertrophy in the heart to even undergo malignant
transformation.3 Since fat is a normal constituent of the
heart, it remains undefined as to exactly how much, and in which
locations, one considers fatty infiltration to be pathological. Whether
fat extends into the myocardium from subepicardial stores, normally
increased with aging and obesity, or arises de novo from pluripotential
interstitial cells or cardiac myocytes, is also undetermined. The
distinction is important if fat present in the myocardium were to
signify prior episodes of hypoxia, during which intracellular lipids no
longer
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This article has been cited by other articles:
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Goldfarb, J. W., Roth, M., Han, J.
(2009). Myocardial Fat Deposition after Left Ventricular Myocardial Infarction: Assessment by Using MR Water-Fat Separation Imaging. Radiology
253: 65-73
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