Cardiomyopathy presenting in the pre-adolescent differs significantly in possible causes, clinical expression and prognosis from that occurring in the adolescent or adult[1, 2]. Even within the pre-adolescent age group cardiomyopathy has different clinical manifestations and management concerns at different developmental stages: fetal, neonatal, early childhood and late childhood[3-5]. The etio...

Primary heart failure in cardiomyopathy occurs in (1) hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic disease of the sarcomere; and (2) in dilated cardiomyopathy. The latter is often regarded as idiopathic in origin, but requires exclusion of all possible etiologies which are becoming easier to identify with modern investigative techniques. Tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy is now increasingly recogniz...

Cardiac MR imaging has made major inroads in the new millennium in the diagnosis and assessment of prognosis for patients with cardiomyopathies. Imaging of left and right ventricular structure and function and tissue characterization with late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) as well as T1 and T2 mapping enable accurate diagnosis of the underlying etiology. In the setting of coronary artery disease...

Myocarditis is a recognized but underdiagnosed cause of cardiomyopathy due to its wide clinical spectrum and nonspecific presentation. Accurate diagnosis is important because 25% of patients with acute myocarditis develop cardiomyopathy, and of those, approximately 5% per year require heart transplantation or die. Current guidelines for the recognition and treatment of the inflammatory cardiomy...