Background
Cardiac involvement in patients with sarcoidosis is an independent predictor of mortality and associated with very poor prognosis. Inflammatory processes within the myocardium as well as subsequent fibrotic myocardial alterations may lead to diastolic dysfunction and at worst sudden death resulting from ventricular tachy-arrhythmias or conduction block. Diastolic dysfunction as a sign of left ventricular (LV) impairment can be assessed accurately by the measurement of early diastolic strain rate (EDSR). In this follow up study we performed cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) feature tracking (FT) in patients with and without cardiac involvement of sarcoidosis in order to investigate its impact on systolic and especially diastolic function over time.