Familial cardiomyopathies

WE must first define the condition we are going to discuss. The best definition was put forward by Professor John Goodwin and his colleagues some years ago. They suggested that 'a cardiomyopathy was a subacute or a chronic disorder of the heart muscle of unknown or obscure aetiology, often associated with endocardial and sometimes pericardial involvement, but not atherosclerotic in origin'. The cases I intend to discuss are the idio- pathic group, i.e. those due to such conditions as amyloid, sarcoid, and collagen disease have been