Familial dilated cardiomyopathy

The author surveys the literature and gives a state of art of familial dilatative cardiomyopathy including his own experience. In the past two decades, III familial dilatative cardiomyopathy cases have been encountered in 30 families in their own material, which means a 21.5 percent incidence rate as concerns the total number of dilatative cardiomyopathy patients. The inheritance pattern was autosomal dominant in the majority of the cases. Both cardiomegaly (20 vs 29.6 ys) and the complaints (29.9 vs 37.6 ys) displayed an earlier onset in familial dilatative cardiomyopathy than in the nonfamilial form. The characters of the signs and symptoms did not differ otherwise between the two groups. Significant differences were observed between the two groups in the progression of the disease: the five-year survival rate after the onset of the symptoms was 23.1 percent in the familial cases and 52.1 percent in the non-familial form (p = 0.026).