Heart Muscle Disease

Heart Muscle Disease
Heart muscle diseases take many forms, all of which have a potential to cause a heart attack. The most common type of heart muscle disease is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This is the most common cause of sudden deaths among people aged below 30.

The main warning signs heart muscle disease is sudden unconsciousness, chest pain or angina, arrhythmias or rapid palpitations and breathlessness. Primary cardiomyopathy does not have any specific causes. This is unlike secondary cardiomyopathy, a condition that is brought by hypertension, artery diseases, heart disease and congenital heart complications. In some cases, diseases that occur outside the heart can also cause this problem.

In hypertrophic cardiomyopathy heart muscles tend to thicken without any explainable cause. The disease is in most cases triggered by hereditary factors such as abnormality in genetic coding. The muscles of the left ventricle become larger than they should ordinarily be. This makes the mitral valve to touch septum, the wall that divides the two ventricles.

The muscle mass in this side of heart becomes stiff such that it does not relax easily. This means that more pressure is required in order to expand them so that blood can find its way into the heart. This condition can occur in fetus, resulting in stillbirth. It can also develop during infancy. However, majority of cases are reported during childbirth and early adulthood.

Another common disease of the heart muscles is dilated cardiomyopathy. This disease results from enlargement of heart cavity. This weakens the heart, such that it is not able to pump blood properly. The muscles become too flexible such that the pumping force that they produce is not enough to take blood round the whole body.

Breathlessness results from build-up of fluids inside the lungs, leading to congestion. This phenomenon leads to a condition known as left heart failure. In the case of right heart failure, fluid accumulates in different organs and tissues in the body. The most affected areas are ankles and legs. The abdomen and liver can also swell.

Yet another type of heart muscle disease is Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy. In this condition, fibrous scar tissue replaces heart muscle especially in the right ventricle. The muscles thicken and then dilate. Eventually, they become thin. This distorts the electrical activity that drives the pumping process.

In restrictive cardiomyopathy, the middle part of the heart's cavity becomes excessively rigid. This impairs the process through which ventricles fill with blood in between two heartbeats.