CardioMyopathy, does anyone have information on this heart disease?

From a patient's point-of-view:

http://www.chfpatients.com

Cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease) causes heart failure. Diagnosis and treatment have improved over the years, but the death toll is still extremely high.

Cardiomyopathy is a general term for any type of heart disease. Cardio = heart; myopathy = disease.

Try looking at webMD.com.

Cardiomyopathy is a serious disease in which the heart muscle becomes inflamed and doesn't work as well as it should. There may be multiple causes including viral infections.

Cardiomyopathy can be classified as primary or secondary. Primary cardiomyopathy can't be attributed to a specific cause, such as high blood pressure, heart valve disease, artery diseases or congenital heart defects. Secondary cardiomyopathy is due to specific causes. It's often associated with diseases involving other organs as well as the heart.

There are three main types of cardiomyopathy -- dilated, hypertrophic and restrictive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiomyopa...
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.j...
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/...

this should get you started

Cardiomyopathy is a very little understood disease. It is a very serious disease in which the heart muscle can become damaged and stop working normally and the reason for damage can be infectious or not infectious. There are many types of this disease and it can be primary (not caused by other disease, this is the main disease) or secondary (caused due to other chronic heart disease like high blood pressure, congenital heart disease, heart valve disease etc). In all the cases, the heart become enlarged, the heart can become dilated (dilated cardiomyopathy) or hypertrophic -- heart muscle enlarges (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) or restrictive -- restrictive heart muscle (restrictive cardiomyopathy).
The treatments are not very specific...
I have cited the American Heart Association link and it is really good.....you can read up on it.

Cardiomyopathies are structural changes in the heart muscle that affect the heart's ability to function. They generally fall into 3 different catagories: dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and restrictive cardiomyopathy.

Dilated cardiomyopathy generally results the heart wall gets stretched. The more it gets stretched, the less able it is to generate good force when it pumps. This is frequently seen in patients who have had significant heart attacks in the past that caused a lot of damage to the heart muscle.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is when the heart muscle gets thicker, causing the heart to fill with less blood, and thus pump less blood. This is commonly seen in patients who have high blood pressure or who have some genetic problems.

Restrictive cardiomyopathy is usually caused by stiffening of the heart muscle, making it more difficult to move and pump blood. This is pretty uncommon, and usually associated with diseases that deposit proteins or other materials within the heart muscle, such as amyloidosis.

More details can be found at the American Heart Association link below.