Clinical Aspects of Cardiomyopathy

Abstract

The term " cardiomyopathy " has come into use to describe disorders of the heart not due primarily to rheumatic, hypertensive, coronary-artery, thyroid, or congenital disease.It is often assumed that cardiomyopathies are rare diseases; but, while this is true of some, recent work has tended to suggest that a number of cardiomyopathies may be commoner than previously thought.Nevertheless, despite increased awareness of the condition, we remain extremely ignorant of the causation of most of the cardiomyopathies.No definition of the cardiomyopathies is entirely satisfactory, but the following is proposed as being generally useful."Cardiomyopathy-a subacute or chronic disorder of heart muscle of unknown or obscure aetiology, often with associated endocardial, and some- times with pericardial, involvement, but not atherosclerotic in origin."Cardiomyopathy may be classified in many ways.The object of the present communication is to suggest a general classification for cardiomyopathy and to emphasize especially the methods of clinical presentation of this condition, basing conclusions on data derived from patients studied personally.So far as is possible the pathology has been correlated with the clinical presentation, with electrocardiography and radiology, and with the results of special investigations, such as angiocardiography and cardiac catheterization.No attempt has been made to give a full classification of * 2 with cardiac infarct.I with anomalous coronary artery.cardial fibroelastosis; in the other 5 the myocardial changes were non-specific.In the third group of 7 JAN.14, 1961