EDUCATION IN HEART
Cardiomyopathy
Management of patients with non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Audrey H Wu
MD, MPH, University of Michigan Hospitals, Women’s Hospital, Room L3623, 1500 E. Medical Center Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48109–0271, USA; ahwu@med.umich.edu
Keywords: cardiomyopathy; dilated cardiomyopathy; heart failure; congestive heart failure
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The term "cardiomyopathy" refers to specific diseases affecting the myocardium which generally lead to clinical manifestations of heart failure, including exercise intolerance, dyspnoea, and fluid retention. The causes of cardiomyopathy can be broadly divided into two categories, ischaemic and non-ischaemic. In ischaemic cardiomyopathy, ventricular dysfunction is a consequence of myocardial ischaemia and infarction related to coronary arteriosclerosis, while there are many potential causes of non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy (NICM), including haemodynamic pathology, infection, immunologic abnormalities, toxic injury, or genetic factors. Determining the prevalence of NICM is made difficult by the heterogeneity in definitions and diagnostic criteria, selection bias in populations studied, and geographic variation. Many epidemiological and clinical studies simply classify patients as having NICM if heart failure is present but there is no clinical or electrocardiographic evidence of coronary disease. In addition, there are clear differences in population characteristics between community-based studies versus analyses of populations from referral centres. Finally,
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Heart 2007 93: 655.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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