What is cardiomyopathy

Cardiomyopathy sounds like a serious disease. Many people confuse cardiomyopathy with heart disease because they don't understand it. In fact, experts tell us that cardiomyopathy is much milder than heart disease. Although severe cardiomyopathy can also cause serious harm, it is still better for the patient's life than heart disease. So, what exactly is cardiomyopathy?

Cardiomyopathies are a heterogeneous group of myocardial diseases caused by different etiologies, resulting in abnormalities in cardiac mechanical and electrical activity, manifested as inappropriate ventricular hypertrophy or dilatation. Severe cardiomyopathy can lead to cardiovascular death or progressive heart failure. Cardiomyopathy is usually divided into primary cardiomyopathy and secondary cardiomyopathy. Primary cardiomyopathy includes dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, restrictive cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy and undetermined cardiomyopathy. Secondary cardiomyopathy refers to cardiomyopathy as part of a systemic disease.

The occurrence of cardiomyopathy is related to many factors. The cause of primary cardiomyopathy is unknown, and secondary cardiomyopathy is mainly related to infection, metabolic diseases, endocrine diseases, ischemia, allergies and other factors.

1. Primary cardiomyopathy

The cause of primary cardiomyopathy is still unclear.

2. Secondary cardiomyopathy

Common causes of the disease include the following:

(1) Infectious causes: These are often caused by serious bacterial, viral, rickettsial, protozoan, etc. Infections occur when bacteria or viruses directly invade the myocardium, or their toxins affect the myocardium, causing cardiomyopathy, the so-called post-myocarditic cardiomyopathy.

(2) Metabolic causes: The most common is cardiomyopathy caused by diabetes. The second is myocardial changes caused by familial glycogen storage disease, beriberi heart disease, alcoholic cardiomyopathy, cardiac amyloidosis, etc.

(3) Endocrine causes: Common causes include hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, acromegaly, etc., which lead to myocardial disease.

(4) Connective tissue diseases: They are common in lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, etc., causing myocardial damage.

(5) Ischemic causes: mainly refers to coronary atherosclerosis and coronary artery spasm causing myocardial ischemic changes, leading to myocardial disease.

(6) Allergic causes: mostly refers to myocardial changes caused by allergies to sulfa drugs, penicillin and other drugs.

(7) Toxic causes: Bacterial toxins from burns, diphtheria, typhoid, etc. directly damage the myocardium and cause cardiomyopathy.