Heart Muscle Disease

Cardiomyopathy and heart failure

Cardiomyopathy is heart muscle disease. In most cases, cardiomyopathy causes the heart muscle becomes weak. Some medical disorders cause various types of cardiomyopathy, but all have one common type of cardiomyopathy that is lowering the efficiency of the heart muscle function and eliminate the heart's ability to meet the needs of the body. When the heart can no longer pump enough blood to meet the needs of the body, there was what is called heart failure.

Types of cardiomyopathy

There are three main types of cardiomyopathy is dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and restrictive cardiomyopathy. The main majority of patients suffering from cardiomyopathy is dilatation type. So after briefly describing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and restrictive, we will concentrate on dilated cardiomyopathy.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a genetic disorder that causes excessive growth of heart muscle cells in the chambers of the heart. This abnormality is thickening of the heart muscle can cause problems on pump enough blood to organs and can potentially cause a fatal cardiac arrhythmia.

Restrictive cardiomyopathy is a rare condition in which the heart muscle is infiltrated and made ​​rigid by abnormal cells, proteins and tissue slice. Rigid heart chambers will limit the return of blood to the heart causing blood to come together in the organs of the body. The most common causes of restrictive cardiomyopathy are amyloidosis, a disease in which a substance such as proteins stored in body tissue. Other causes include sarcoidosis and hemochromatosis.

In dilated cardiomyopathy (often also called congestive cardiomyopathy or congestive heart failure) that were previously normal heart muscle becomes damaged, causing a weakening of the walls of the heart chambers. To compensate for the weakening of the muscular walls, the spaces will be enlarged heart. The weakening and enlargement of the heart muscles eventually lead to heart failure.

The cause of cardiomyopathy Dilatation

There are many causes for almost everything that can damage the heart muscle can cause dilated cardiomyopathy.

The most common cause of dilated cardiomyopathy in developed countries is coronary heart disease. Heart attacks caused the death of heart muscle by blockage of coronary arteries. When the damage is localized in the area of muscle supplied by this artery, in a few months the whole of the left ventricle of heart enlarges to compensate for the damage. With a mild heart attack, the amount of enlargement is a small cubicle (at least). But with a severe heart attack (large) or with a series of mild heart attack, dilated cardiomyopathy become very extensive and heart failure confirmed.

Other common causes of dilated cardiomyopathy was inflammatory (inflammation) of the heart muscle, a condition called myocarditis. Myocarditis most commonly caused by viral infections, but can also disebakan by bacterial infection and the cause is not infection such as lupus and other inflammatory diseases.

Alcohol is another cause of dilated cardiomyopathy. In some patients (possibly determined by genetic) alcohol can be a powerful poison to the heart muscle cells directly damage the heart.