What is cardiomyopathy? Can you explain systolic and diastolic cardiomyopathy?

Cardiomyopathy means disease of the heart muscle. Systolic dysfunction is when the heart does not pump as effectively as it should and causes a reduced ejection fraction, meaning the amount of blood that is pumped out of the heart is less than it should be. Diastolic dysfunction is when the heart does not fill as well as it should. Often people with diastolic heart failure continue to have preserved ejection fractions and thus do not have systolic heart failure which is what is considered to be the "norm" in terms of heart failure. Systolic has been long thought to be more common but they are finding more incidences of diastolic now.

Hi @winom, how are you?
Did @cynaburst's explanation get to the core of your question? Have you been diagnosed with systolic cardiomyopathy or diastolic cardiomyopathy?

I don’t know the answer to your question. Have you asked your doctor? Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is generally caused by a genetic mutation though they have recently identified another subset which is not genetic and is identified later. Your Cardiomyopathy sounds like it may be a different type.

I recently did ask about the liploma and he said it is not related to my cardiomyopathy and 30% of patients there is not a specific reason as to what caused it. But I do thank you for responding. I don't know other than what he told me that it is both dystolic and systolic.
Sorry it took so long to read this. I thought it was lost out there or I didn't post it correctly so I have not been checking it.

I am a 64 yr old woman with systolic and diystolic cardiomyopathy. I have a large liploma in my right atrium measuring 3.7 centimeters They attributed my atruial flutter with this, can this be contributing to my cardiomyopathy also?

Hello @sharongyl64,

You may notice that I moved your discussion and combined it with this one asI thought it would be beneficial for you to be introduced to @winom who has mentioned a similar issue.

To put it simply, diastolic dysfunction is when the heart muscle becomes stiff and blood can back up into the lungs causing shortness of breath (also known as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction).
Systolic dysfunction is when the heart muscle is weak and heart function is reduced (heart failure with reduced ejection fraction).
Sometimes, it is possible to have a combination of both these conditions.

I found a few published studies about systolic-diastolic cardiomyopathy which might interest you:
– https://www.onlinejcf.com/article/S1071-9164(02)25409-3/fulltext
– https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4891930/

I'm also tagging @bigdaddye @braves04 @martishka @kenv267 as they've talked about atrial flutter and might have some thoughts to share. How are you feeling now, @sharongyl64?

My husbands cardiomyopathy is idiopathic

Both systolic and diastolic. Feeling good right now still get tired more than I would like, But my ejection fraction is staying at 47. I just had an echo. So diuretics are working.

Both, but my ejection fraction has remained at 47, just had an echo. So medicine they have me on is working. I am also doing better with the salt intake.

Thank you for the links to more info and your explanation of the disease. Doctor recently cut my coreg in half to get my heart rate up.