Cardiomyopathy

The functional classification of the three types of cardiomyopathy has been helpful in organizing practitioners' thinking. The past three decades have witnessed tremendous advances in understanding of the pathophysiology, clinical and laboratory diagnosis, and treatment of these disorders. New doors of exploration are opening to answer such nagging questions as whether medical therapy alters long-term survival rates in dilated (congestive) cardiomyopathy, whether immunologic therapy will alter the course of dilated or restrictive/obliterative cardiomyopathy, and whether genetic manipulation or in utero therapy will prevent hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The goals of effective treatment in all these disorders remain the same: amelioration of symptoms, prevention of sudden death, and constraint or resolution of the basic disease process. Achieving these goals requires a multidisciplinary approach, involving cardiologists, surgeons, immunologists, geneticists, cell biologists, virologists, and pathologists. Prospects are that one day treatment will no longer be an imprecise, palliative art but a definitive, curative science.