Cardiomyopathy

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Cardiomyopathy Treatment

While all types of cardiomyopathy can cause heart failure, each case requires specific strategies for recovery. Heart failure is treated with a vigorous blend of patient education, dietary changes, and medications.

Possible medications include:

• Positive inotropic agents: These chemicals help the heart contract. The main agent of this category is digoxin. In-hospital options include dopamine, dobutamine, and milrinone.
• Diuretics: Often called "water pills," diuretics help relieve the fluid overloads in heart failure.
• Vasodilators: These drugs dilate blood vessels at several levels in the body, reducing the workload for the heart.
• ACE-inhibitors and Beta blockers: These treatments act as vasodilators while helping to preserve the normal architecture of the heart muscle
• Other drugs: Angiotensin II receptor blockers, antiarrhythmic drugs, and blood thinners.

Another technique which can be used is biventricular pacing. In this treatment, a pacemaker lead (i.e., cable) is inserted in each ventricle to help the heart contract better.

In severe cases, surgical procedures, which can be implemented to sustain life until a transplant donor becomes available, can help but do not cure the disease. They include:

• Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD): Treatment provides mechanical circulatory support.
• Dynamic Cardiomyoplasty: A procedure in which a skeletal muscle flap, created from a patient's thoracic muscle, is trained to contract often and "wrapped around" the heart to help it contract.

Advanced, severe heart failure requires heart transplantation.