Cardiac Concern: What Are The 5 Most Common Signs And Symptoms Of Cardiomyopathy? | Cardiovascular Disorders and Diseases articles | Body & Health Conditions center

Cardiomyopathy is a group of heart muscle diseases. It’s characterized by changes in the structure of the heart muscle, including the size, shape or thickness of the muscle walls. These changes affect the way in which the heart works, making it pump blood less efficiently as the disease progresses.

The cardiomyopathy group encompasses a variety of disorders that can range from asymptomatic conditions that don’t need to be treated to ones that require open-heart surgery. It can lead to life-threatening complications such as heart failure, stroke, and sudden cardiac death.

Why is it important to recognize the early signs of cardiomyopathy?

The problem with cardiomyopathy is that the first phase is often asymptomatic. During this phase, the heart goes through structural and metabolical changes that eventually alter the way in which your heart works. The symptoms of cardiomyopathy can be difficult to recognize since many of them, like for example feeling tired and weak, can be attributed to a variety of other causes.

Moreover, you probably wouldn’t associate heart disease with people who are in otherwise great health and their prime years, but the truth is that anyone can have cardiomyopathy, regardless of their age, sex, or fitness level. In fact, cardiomyopathy is the main cause of sudden cardiac death among young athletes.

However, being aware of which symptoms can be indicative of cardiomyopathy is important for several reasons:

Risk of sudden cardiac death or stroke. While you might not feel it, in the asymptomatic phase the heart can go through drastic structural changes that put you at risk of a stroke or sudden cardiac death, complications that can be prevented if cardiomyopathy is diagnosed and addressed.
The extent of the damage. Most types of cardiomyopathy are irreversible. In other words, treatment can help manage the symptoms and prevent complications, but it won’t reverse existing damage and changes. The exception is cardiomyopathy caused by an underlying condition (like diabetes or tachycardia) or agents that are toxic to the heart (drugs, toxins, viruses). In that case, removing the cause can reverse cardiomyopathy.
Treatment and prognosis. Like most diseases, the further cardiomyopathy has progressed, the harder it is to treat. Many types of cardiomyopathy will lead to heart failure if left untreated. More advanced forms of the disease often require treatment that comes with its own set of risks, like open-heart surgery.

What are the most common symptoms of cardiomyopathy?

Having all or most of the symptoms might be a reason to worry and schedule a visit with your doctor, but you shouldn’t think of them as a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy. To confirm whether you have cardiomyopathy, your physician will need to perform tests that can give more information about your heart’s structure and function.

1. Shortness of breath (dyspnea)

While being short of breath is normal during strenuous physical activity or in extreme situations (like extreme temperatures or panic attacks), feeling out of breath during light activity or even while resting should never be taken lightly. Dyspnea might feel like you can’t get enough air or you can’t breathe in deeply.

Your heart is a muscular pump made up of four chambers: two upper chambers called atria, and two lower chambers called ventricles. The deoxygenated blood travels to the right side of your heart, from where it’s pumped to the lungs by the contractions of the right ventricle. The blood is then oxygenated in the lungs and enters the left side of the heart.

The left ventricle is the heart’s main pumping chamber, responsible for pumping blood from the lungs to the whole body. Left ventricle dysfunction means the heart can’t pump enough of the blood that comes from the lungs. When this happens, pressure builds up inside the heart and pushes fluids into the lungs. The fluid disrupts the changes of gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide), leaving you short of breath. The lack of oxygen might make you feel dizzy or lightheaded. In some people, fluid accumulation can also cause coughing or wheezing.

Shortness of breath is one of the main signs of heart failure. However, it’s also a common symptom of various other conditions like anxiety, asthma, congestion, pneumonia (inflammation of the lungs), obesity, or pregnancy, to name a few. The type of dyspnea that becomes worse when you lie down is most commonly but not exclusively caused by heart problems. Until you address this issue, supporting your head with pillows might make you feel easier.

2. Unexplained, increasing fatigue and weakness

Persistent and repeated exhaustion or fatigue can be caused by anything from lack of sleep, medications, or alcohol to several medical conditions. You might have difficulties performing everyday tasks that weren't demanding before, like climbing stairs or carrying groceries.

Our organism is equipped to deal with changes in a way that maximizes our odds of survival. When the heart doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to and there’s not enough oxygenated blood to go around, the body will redirect blood from less important parts of the body, like your extremities, to essential internal organs like the heart, brain, and kidneys.

In that setting, your muscles don’t get as much oxygen as they need to perform their function (contract and allow for movement), leaving you with a feeling of weakness and tiredness. Patients who feel persistent fatigue are often advised to keep a diary of energy levels on normal days. This can help you see if your fatigue increases over time, which is indicative of heart failure.

3. Arrhythmia (feeling that your heart beats too fast or flutters)

Arrhythmias are abnormalities in the timing and/or the pattern of the heartbeat and they are a common symptom of cardiomyopathy. In some cases, they can be both the symptom and the cause.

Your heart might try to compensate for not working well enough by beating faster, causing a type of arrhythmia called tachycardia in which the resting heart rate is above 100 beats per minute. This type of compensation often occurs with heart failure.

Arrhythmias can also happen due to changes in the heart’s structure. Heart contractions happen as a result of an electrical stimulus that originates from special groups of cells in the heart and spreads through the heart’s electrical network. All the structural changes that happen in cardiomyopathy, like the stretching or the thickening of the heart walls, formation of scar tissue or other abnormal tissues, lead to barriers in electrical conductivity, just like putting a nonmetal material between two wires would cause a change in the transport of electricity. That can cause the signal to arrive too late or sometimes too soon, leading to irregular heart rhythm.

4. Swollen legs, feet, ankles or abdomen (edema) and unexplained weight gain

If the heart doesn’t have enough pumping power to pump the deoxygenated (used) blood from your legs, fluid can accumulate in parts of your legs or your abdomen. This causes rapid weight gain.

5. Fainting and lightheadedness

Fainting and feeling lightheaded happen when the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen. This can be caused by other symptoms of cardiomyopathy, like not being able to breathe in enough air. It can also happen due to a heart rate that is too slow (bradycardia) or too fast (tachycardia).

Some types of cardiomyopathy lead to changes in the heart valves, which are something like gates between two chambers that ensure that the blood flows in one direction. Heart valve problems lead to the same effect, the lack of oxygenated blood in the brain (and other body parts). Fainting as a symptom of cardiomyopathy is especially characteristic for a type called dilated cardiomyopathy, in which one or both of the heart ventricles become enlarged.