Cardiomyopathy: Complications

Transcript

Well, cardiomyopathy, despite aggressive treatment, can be a progressive disease and can lead to progressive weakening of the heart muscle and potentially progressive heart failure, such that the patient may end up on a transplant list. Cardiomyopathy can lead to arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation, where if untreated and not protected with blood thinners to reduce the risk of stroke, the patient could have embolism and suffer a stroke. Other arrhythmias, such as ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation that could lead to sudden death that require ICDs to protect against that. And then if you have a heart that’s weak, that’s not pumping effectively, blood movement is slow and blood can clot. And so patients can have clots in the tip of the heart that could dislodge and go and cause a stroke or systemic embolism. And they can have clots form in the appendage, particularly if they have atrial fibrillation. So thinning of the blood becomes necessary, particularly if you identify a clot, and these patients need to be on blood thinners to reduce the risk of stroke and systemic embolism.