Prognosis in Endocardial Fibroelastosis

Until recently endocardial fibroelastosis has been considered a rare fatal disease occurring in infants and young children.^1-3 With greater clinical awareness, the diagnosis has been suspected more frequently in living patients.^4-6 Clinical evidence, combined with the typical angiocardiographic findings in this disease, now permits presumptive antemortem diagnosis.⁷ Discussion will include the criteria which lead to the clinical diagnosis, the use of angiocardiography to confirm the clinical impression, methods of management, and the course of endocardial fibroelastosis.

Material and Methods  This report describes the course of 17 children in whom primary endocardial fibroelastosis was presumptively diagnosed during life. Sixteen are consecutive cases initially seen at or referred to the UCLA Medical Center from 1956 through 1961. No patient in whom endocardial fibroelastosis was diagnosed during this period has been omitted. Case 2 was studied in 1950 by Dr. F. H. Adams at the University of Minnesota Hospital and