Insufficiency of hypertrophied heart.

There are two types of compensatory hypertrophy of the heart. In valvular diseases, systemic hypertension and pulmonary arterial hypertension, the resultant hypertrophy compensates the increased load on the organ and is designated as hypertrophy due to overload. In ischemic disease, hereditary cardiomyopathies and myocarditis, the hypertrophy compensates for the functional insufficiency of the damaged myocardial tissue and is designated as hypertrophy due to damage. It is shown in this paper that increase in cardiac mass in both types of compensatory hypertrophy prevents acute cardiac insufficiency but at the same time is a non-balanced form of growth. As a result, in severe hypertrophy a disturbance of normal proportions at all levels of cardiac structural integration occurs. Disturbances of this type which gradually become causes of cardiac insufficiency are the main subject of this paper.