Cardiomyopathy is one of the most frequent causes of heart failure. It is often associated with inadequate heart pumping or other heart function abnormalities. There are many different causes of the disease, e.g. other diseases, alcoholism, high blood pressure, viral infections; therefore many different kinds of cardiomyopathies exist, belonging to five main types of CM: Dilated CM, Hypertrophic CM, Restrictive CM, Right Ventricular CM, Nonclassifiable CM. This volume focuses on inflammatory CM, belonging to the Dilated Cardiomyopathies (DCMi). It covers epidemiology/prognosis, pathology, immunology, diagnosis and treatment strategies.

Cardiomyopathy is one of the most frequent causes of heart failure, and a leading entity of cardiac transplantation in the era of modern heart failure regimens. This volume focuses on major advances in inflammatory cardiomyopathy (DCMi) during the past 10 years. The book is divided up into the following sections: 1. Myocarditis and inflammatory cardiomyopathy - clinical management, epidemiology and prognosis; 2. Animal Models of myocarditis - autoimmunity and viral infection; therapeutic interventions; 3. Alterations of the immune system in human viral and inflammatory cardiomyopathy; 4. Diagnosis of inflammatory and viral cardiomyopathy; 5. Treatment strategies in inflammatory cardiomyopathy patients. An international group of authors discusses topics as the histological Dallas criteria for clinical diagnostics, emerging relevance of immunohistological detection of DCMi and detectability of viruses in EMBs, and epidemiology and standard clinical treatment of acute myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy patients. This volume serves as a valuable source for cardiologists and cardiovascular pathologists to update their knowledge on DCMi, a still enigmatic and fascinating cardiovascular disorder, which has made major steps from bench to bedside in the past decade.