Cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) is an inflammatory condition that can present with heart failure (HF). Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is known to improve clinical outcomes for patients with left bundle branch block in the general HF population. However, data about the outcomes of CRT in CS is limited.
A systematic literature search was conducted using PubMed/Medline, Embase, and the Cochrane Library from inception to February 2024 to identify studies that reported clinical outcomes following the use of CRT in patients with CS. Data for outcomes was extracted, pooled, and analyzed. OpenMetaAnalyst was used for pooling untransformed proportions along with the corresponding 95 % confidence intervals (CIs).
Five studies with a total of 176 CS patients who received CRT were included. The pooled incidence for all-cause mortality was 7.6 % (95 % CI: -3 % to 18 %), for HF-related hospitalizations 23.2 % (95 % CI: 2 % to 43 %), and for major adverse cerebral and cardiovascular events 27 % (95 % CI: 8 % to 45 %) after a mean follow-up of 60.1 (±48.7) months. The pooled left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was 34.28 % (95 % CI: 29.88 % to 38.68 %) demonstrating an improvement of 3.75 % in LVEF from baseline LVEF of 30.58 % (95 % CI: 24.68 % to 36.48 %). The mean New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class was 2.16 (95 % CI: 1.47 to 2.84) after CRT as compared to the baseline mean NYHA of 2.58 (95 % CI: 2.29 to 2.86).
Although improvements were observed in LVEF and mean NYHA, mortality was high in CS patients with CRT.