A 74-year-old man with heart failure had already been tested for cardiac amyloidosis, and the nuclear scan came back negative. Then a cardiac MRI showed something that did not fit: a ring of thickened muscle wrapped around only the base of his heart, shaped like a donut.
That pattern sent doctors back for a second look, and a repeat scan confirmed transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, or ATTR-CM. Cardiologists at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh describe the case in a September 2026 report in JACC: Case Reports, titled "Donut Morphology of Cardiac Amyloidosis."