Definiton

Myocarditis is an inflammatory disease of the heart muscle (myocardium). Inflammation is to be found either just on a few places of the myocardium (so-called nidus) and in the entire heart muscle (so call diffusion inflammation). Inflammation is caused mostly by a virus. Myocarditis is associated with damage and necrosis of the heart muscle cells.

The course of myocarditis can be different for each individual (it can even go without any symptoms – asymptomatically). The disease has a different onset and course for every patient and therefore patients with myocarditis are treated individually. Myocarditis is a serious and in some cases life-threatening disease.

Diagnosis of myocarditis is one of the most complicated in cardiology.  For now, there is no single specific examination or test that could diagnostic myocarditis. Doctors always need a “set” of tests (see this page). Myocarditis could be mistaken in some cases as a heart attack or other ischemic heart disease (ischemic – hypoperfusion).

Treatment of myocarditis consists mostly of treatment of the symptoms and complications. Treatment of the cause of myocarditis is complicated as there is a huge amount of causes and different course of the disease in each individual (see category Diagnosis & Treatment – category Treatment Possibilities and Research).

Occurence (epidemiology) of myocarditis

It is quite complicated to find out the occurrence of myocarditis and existed theories are different. There are approximately 20 – 170 new cases of myocarditis per1 million people per year. More commonly it affects man, most likely due to testosterone. For more information about myocarditis course click here.

Authors of the opening picture: Wapcaplet, Yaddah, Wnauta