Cardiomegalia

Cardiomegalia is the term that defines an abnormal enlargement of the heart or cardiac hypertrophy. One is a symptom that appears in people with cardiac insufficiency systolic chronicle or diverse types of miocardiopatías.

Classification

Cardiomegalia can affect to one or both ventricles or auricles. Habitually it is classified of the following way:

• Cardiomegalia by expansion, that is derived from a damage that debilitates the cardiac muscle, like an heart attack.
• Cardiomegalia by hypertrophy: most habitual it is than the hypertrophy is of the left heart, or in more serious cases, of all the heart. Nevertheless, certain pathologies exist in which exists a hypertrophy isolated of some of the cardiac cameras:
  • Auricular, or left or right hypertrophy.
  • Ventricular hypertrophy:
    • Left ventricular hypertrophy, that can be derived from prolonged arterial hypertension.
    • Right ventricular hypertrophy, that can be produced by pulmonary hypertension, or in cases of left ventricular hypertrophy of years of evolution.

References

1. ↑ Cardiomegaly (cardiomegalia) in National Library of Medicine - Medical Subject Headings (in English).
2. ↑ Enlarged Heart in American Heart Association (in English).
3. ↑ Cardiomegalia in Medciclopedia: Illustrated dictionary of medical terms.

Outline medicine | Cardiac diseases