The Fight Against Restrictive Cardiomyopathy

Restrictive cardiomyopathy, also referred to as infiltrative cardiomyopathy, is a condition that affects the myocardium, the muscles of the heart. It is a disease that is characterized by the heart’s inability to fill its chambers with blood. This happens because its muscles become stiff that it can no longer pump blood properly.

The general appearance of a person’s heart with restrictive cardiomyopathy is somewhat normal. It may be enlarged, but not by much. The main problem observed is that the heart cannot relax in the normal way that it should between heartbeats. And as the disease progresses, blood may not reach the intended body parts. And so other body systems are affected, with the lungs and liver being the first organs to suffer.

A person usually develops restrictive cardiomyopathy due to an underlying condition on his body, usually in his heart. Most of the time, either idiopathic myocardial fibrosis or amyloidosis is diagnosed in the person prior. But it is also possible that restrictive cardiomyopathy had developed after a person goes through heart transplant operation to cure another condition of the heart.

Other ailments such as tumor infiltrations, radiation fibrosis, hemochromatosis, sarcoidosis are also believed to cause restrictive cardiomyopathy, although these cases are quite uncommon. And in even more unusual instances, endocardium diseases like Loeffler’s syndrome and endomyocardial fibrosis could have caused it.

One of the signs and symptoms associated with restrictive cardiomyopathy is fatigue. People with this disease will feel engulfing tiredness, even if they are just doing the normal, everyday things that they do. And aside from fatigue, they may also experience swelling, mostly in their ankles and feet. This is because this disease may cause fluid retention in the body. There are also instances wherein the abdomen also becomes swollen.

Coughing and difficulty in breathing becomes apparent in some patients. Difficulty in breathing is almost always associated with the amount of energy the body has exerted. It may also happen during the night or when the patient is lying in a flat position.

The diagnosis for restrictive cardiomyopathy is almost the same with other heart diseases. Of course, the most common procedure the ECG, or electrocardiogram is used. An echocardiogram with a Doppler study of the heart may also be performed. The simplest of tests, the chest x-ray is not overlooked at all. In fact, doctors might even request it way before the other methods are performed. More special tests like coronary angiography, CT scan and MRI scan of the chest are also conducted.

The full treatment of restrictive cardiomyopathy is secondary, because an effective method to cure this disease is yet to be developed. Instead, the focus of the medical therapies prescribed by doctors is to control the symptoms associated with the disease, with the aim of improving the quality, as well as to prolong the patient’s life.

Medicines are prescribed, and mostly the drugs given are called diuretics. These drugs effectively remove the fluid from the body, and they do so much to improve the patient’s breathing as well. Some patients need to undergo chemotherapy and take steroids. For the more advances cases, a heart transplant may be necessary.

If left untreated, the condition may progress, causing other diseases such as total heart failure, mitral regurgitation, or tricuspid regurgitation. For patients with poor heart conditions but refuse to undergo heart transplant, the average period of survival after an accurate diagnosis is given, is nine years.

It is then mandatory that the symptoms of any heart diseases be addressed at once. When they first surface, medical attention has to be sought. Delaying medication is not going to help; instead it could be highly dangerous to the patient, as most heart diseases can cause sudden death.