Dilated cardiomyopathy is a condition in which the heart becomes enlarged and cannot pump blood effectively. Symptoms vary from none to feeling tired, leg swelling, and shortness of breath. Complications can include heart failure, heart valve disease, or an irregular heartbeat. Causes include genetics, alcohol, cocaine, certain toxins, complications of pregnancy, and certain infections.
About Dilated cardiomyopathy in brief
Dilated cardiomyopathy is a condition in which the heart becomes enlarged and cannot pump blood effectively. Symptoms vary from none to feeling tired, leg swelling, and shortness of breath. Complications can include heart failure, heart valve disease, or an irregular heartbeat. Causes include genetics, alcohol, cocaine, certain toxins, complications of pregnancy, and certain infections. Treatment may include medications in the ACE inhibitor, beta blocker, and diuretic families. A low salt diet may also be helpful. Cardiac resynchronization therapy may be necessary. If other measures are not effective a heart transplant may be an option in some. About 1 per 2,500 people is affected. It occurs more frequently in men than women. Onset is most often in middle age. Five-year survival rate is about 50%. It can also occur in children and is the most common type of card iomyopathy in this age group. About 25–35% of affected individuals have familial forms of the disease, with most mutations affecting genes encoding cytoskeletal proteins, while some affect other proteins involved in contraction.
Mitochondrial deletions and mutations presumably cause DCM by altering myocardial ATP generation. The most common form of its transmission is an autosomal dominant pattern. Autosomal recessive ), X-linked, and mitochondrial inheritance is also found. The progression of heart failure is associated with left ventricular remodeling, which manifests as gradual increases in left-diastolic volumes, wallning, and a change in chamber geometry to a more spherical, less elongated shape. This process is usually associated with a continuous decline in ejection fraction associated with heart remodeling. The concept of cardiac remodeling was initially developed to describe changes that occur in the days and months following myocardium infarction. It may be the late sequelae of acute viral myocarditis, such as with Coxsackie B virus and other enteroviruses possibly mediated through an immunologic mechanism. Recent studies have shown that those subjects with an extremely high occurrence of premature ventricular contractions can develop dilated cardiomeopathy.
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This page is based on the article Dilated cardiomyopathy published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
