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Restrictive cardiomyopathy - Symptom

Alternative Names

Cardiomyopathy - restrictive; Infiltrative cardiomyopathy

Symptoms:

Cough
Difficulty breathing
- At night
- Especially with exertion
- When lying flat
Fatigue, poor exercise tolerance
Swelling of the abdomen
Swelling of the feet and ankles

Signs and tests:

An examination may show:

Signs of heart failure
Fluid backup into the lungs, hands and feet, gastrointestinal tract, and liver
Distended neck veins
Lung crackles and abnormal or distant heart sounds when listening to the chest with a stethoscope (auscultation)

Tests for restrictive cardiomyopathy include:

Restrictive cardiomyopathy may be hard to tell apart from constrictive pericarditis. A biopsy of the heart muscle or cardiac catheterization may help confirm the diagnosis.

Heart, section through the middle

Heart, front view

Reviewed last on: 5/15/2008
Alan Berger, MD, Assistant Professor, Divisions of Cardiology and Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.

References

Hare JM. The Dilated, Restrictive, and Infiltrative Cardiomyopathies. In: Libby P, Bonow RO, Mann DL, Zipes DP. Libby: Braunwald's Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. 8th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2007:chap 64.

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