People with heart failure may find themselves being hospitalized frequently due to the buildup of fluid. It’s very important to let your healthcare team know at the first sign of symptoms of fluid buildup, such as decreased exercise ability, breathlessness, and leg swelling. At earlier stages, this can typically be managed with changes in oral medication doses.
What tests will be done to diagnose this condition?
- The efficacy of abstinence has been shown in persons with early disease (eg, prior to the onset of severe myocardial fibrosis) and in individuals with more advanced disease (see Prognosis).
- Some other forms of cardiomyopathy, such as cardiac amyloidosis (when deposits of an abnormal protein form in the heart muscle) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (thickening of the heart muscle), have more specific treatments.
- However, the reality is that it is a toxin that can have an impact on organs, including the heart.
- People with heart failure often require diuretics, which remove salt and water from the body, to help manage fluid overload.
- Addiction Resource is an educational platform for sharing and disseminating information about addiction and substance abuse recovery centers.
To diagnose ACM, clinicians need to identify a dilated heart muscle, rule out other potential causes, and conduct an extensive assessment of the patients’ alcohol use [3,22]. However, the substantial stigma around alcohol dependence [36] may deter clinicians from such conversations with their patients, as reported alcoholic cardiomyopathy in primary care [37]. In order to calculate mortality rates (i.e., deaths per 100,000 adults) we combined the mortality data with population estimates from the UN Population Division [20]. Alcohol exposure was defined as intake of pure alcohol per adult (in liters per year, alcohol per capita consumption).
Prognosis of alcoholic cardiomyopathy
In summary, vital statistics may be the best available data source to estimate ACM mortality to date. Yet, prospective studies on the relationship between alcohol intake and incidence of cardiomyopathy are required to yield more accurate mortality estimates. For other alcohol-attributable diseases, mortality is estimated using alcohol-attributable fractions, which are calculated from exposure and risk functions (for global mortality https://ecosoberhouse.com/ estimates, see reference [26]; for a summary of risk functions, see reference [27]). As alcohol-attributable fractions are stratified by age groups, the decline in exposure in the elderly population can be reflected in lower alcohol-attributable fractions in these age groups. For ACM, mortality in the GBD study is estimated by redistributing garbage coded deaths, yet without accounting for age variations in alcohol exposure [12,23].
Clinical Presentation
Treatment for alcoholic cardiomyopathy is directed towards source control. Alcohol-induced cardiotoxicity can be characterized by acute and chronic. Myocardial depression secondary to alcohol is initially reversible however prolonged sustained alcohol use leads to irreversible dysfunction. Calls to our general hotline may be answered by private treatment providers. We may be paid a fee for marketing or advertising by organizations that can assist with treating people with substance use disorders.
Between ACM and heart failure, the distribution of deaths across age groups were substantially different. Among 50 to 64 year olds, the largest share of ACM deaths (47%) but only a fraction of HF garbage code deaths (7%) have been registered. This pattern reversed for the older age groups (65 years and older), among which 29% of all ACM deaths but 91% of all deaths assigned with HF garbage codes have been registered. Further and as illustrated in Appendix Figure A1, the association of % ACM deaths and % HF garbage code deaths varied largely across sex and age.
According to the NIAAA, many people with AUD recover, although setbacks are common among those receiving treatment. A 2023 article notes that ACM carries a more positive outlook than ischemic cardiomyopathy, which refers to heart damage that typically occurs due to CAD. For some people, a combination of factors could also lead to a weakened heart.
