Use of PET/CT to detect myocardial inflammation and the risk of malignant arrhythmia in chronic Chagas disease.

Background: Chagas heart disease (CHD) is characterized by progressive myocardial inflammation associated with myocardial fibrosis and segmental abnormalities that may lead to malignant ventricular arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. This arrhythmia might be related to the persistence of parasitemia or inflammation in the myocardium in late-stage CHD. Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) has been used to detect myocardial inflammation in non-ischemic cardiomyopathies, such as sarcoidosis, and might be useful for risk prediction in patients with CHD.

Methods And Results: Twenty-four outpatients with chronic CHD were enrolled in this prospective cross-sectional study between May 2019 and March 2022. The patients were divided into two groups: those with sustained ventricular tachycardia and/or aborted sudden cardiac death who required implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, and those with the same stages of CHD and no complex ventricular arrhythmia. Patients underwent F-fluorodeoxyglucose (F-FDG) and Ga-DOTATOC PET/CT, and blood samples were collected for qualitative parasite assessment by polymerase chain reaction. Although similar proportions of patients with and without complex ventricular arrhythmia showed F-FDG and Ga-DOTATOC uptake, Ga-DOTATOC corrected SUV was higher in patients with complex arrhythmia (3.4 vs 1.7; P = .046), suggesting that inflammation could be associated with the presence of malignant arrhythmia in the late stages of CHD. We also detected Trypanosoma cruzi in both groups, with a nonsignificant trend of increased parasitemia in the group with malignant arrhythmia (66.7% vs 33.3%).

Conclusion: F-FDG and Ga-DOTATOC uptake on PET/CT may be useful for the detection of myocardial inflammation in patients with Chagas cardiomyopathy, and Ga-DOTATOC uptake may be associated with the presence of malignant arrhythmia, with potential therapeutic implications.