Search Media Items

Certain diseases, conditions, or factors can raise your risk for cardiomyopathy. Major risk factors include a family history, preexisting disease or condition, diabetes, diseases that can damage the heart, long-term alcoholism, and long-term high blood pressure.

Many times, the cause of cardiomyopathy isn’t known. Cardiomyopathy can be acquired (you are not born with the condition but develop it due to another disease, condition, or factor) or inherited (your parents passed the gene for the disease on to you).

The types of cardiomyopathy include hypertrophic, dilated, restrictive, arrhythmogenic right ventricular, and unclassified cardiomyopathy.

Cardiomyopathy refers to diseases of the heart muscle in which the heart muscle becomes enlarged, thick, or rigid. As cardiomyopathy worsens, the heart becomes weaker.