Cardiac imaging in heart failure in the personalized medicine era: Pathway to knowledge or Tiresias' paradox?

Cardiac imaging in heart failure in the personalized medicine era: Pathway to knowledge or Tiresias' paradox? Eur J Intern Med. 2021 Jan 08;: Authors: Finocchiaro G, Carr-White G, Sinagra G Abstract Tiresias was the blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes. Tiresias is a symbolic figure, which embodies a paradox: he is blind in the physical sense, but his knowledge surpasses all, as opposed to Oedipus who cannot see despite having a good eyesight. Cardiac imaging can be considered the technological extension of human eyes, which has clearly revolutionised the diagnostic approach in Cardiology and specifically in heart failure. Echocardiography contributed to an approach focused on the ejection fraction (EF) which is the cornerstone of the most recent classifications of heart failure. The recent advances in cardiac imaging raised our ability to understand the aetiological roots of disease. However, the increasing amount of information generated by the plethora of diagnostic imaging techniques raises the challenge of clinical significance. The explosion of "big data" in cardiac imaging may also impact on classifications and nomenclature and on our ability to cluster and categorize, an exercise that is becoming remarkably challenging when the quest for the particular is taken to the extreme and the infinitesimal. The essence of cardiac conditions causing heart failure would probably not entirely captured by an approach only focused on the dire...
Source: European Journal of Internal Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Eur J Intern Med Source Type: research