Cardiomyopathy is a chronic disease of the myocardium characterized by an abnormal dilatation and thinning of the left ventricular (LV), associated with the contractile dysfunction of the muscle and loss of pump capacity, resulting in the occurrence of arrhythmias and myocardial infarction. It has many causes and can occur in the liver pathology inclusively.

During the course of cirrhosis, there is a progressive deterioration of cardiac function manifested by the disappearance of the hyperdynamic circulation due to a failure in heart function with decreased cardiac output. This is due to a deterioration in inotropic and chronotropic function which takes place in parallel with a diastolic dysfunction and cardiac hypertrophy in the absence of other k...

cirrhosis is characterized by marked abnormalities in the cardiovascular system. a hyperdynamic splanchnic and systemic circulation is typical of cirrhotic patients and has been observed in all experimental forms of portal hypertension. the hyperdynamic circulation is most likely initiated by arterial vasodilatation, leading to central hypovolemia, sodium retention, and an increased intravascul...

Patients with end-stage liver disease in need of liver transplantation increasingly are older with a greater burden of cardiac disease and other co-morbidities, which may increase perioperative risk and adversely affect long-term prognosis. Cirrhosis of any etiology manifests hemodynamically as a state of low systemic vascular resistance, with high peripheral, but low central blood volume, lead...

The syndrome of cirrhotic cardiomyopathy, first recognized in 1969 but mistakenly presumed to reflect latent alcoholic cardiomyopathy in patients with alcoholic cirrhosis, is now recognized to occur in all forms of cirrhosis, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and thus is associated with cirrhosis per se. The hallmark of the syndrome is normal or increased ventricular contractility at rest, but depre...

The enzyme heme oxygenase (HO), which exists in inducible (HO-1) and constitutive (HO-2) isoforms, degrades heme to biliverdin and CO. CO depresses cardiac contraction via cGMP. We aimed to clarify a possible role for the HO-CO pathway in the pathogenesis of cirrhotic cardiomyopathy in bile duct-ligated rats. Four weeks after bile duct ligation or sham operation, rat ventricles were examined fo...