[Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. The importance of echography for diagnosis (author's transl)].

Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy is a primary disease of the myocardium. It usually involves hypertrophy of the septum and the outflow tract of the left ventricle, but it may also occur in all other areas of the ventricles. In a first step, the diastolic performance of the heart falls due to the impaired elasticity of the myocardium, later the contractile function in systole is also affected because of the slow filling of the ventricle. Tachycardial dysrhythmias and left-sided failure are frequent causes of death. Besides drug-therapy with beta-receptor blockers and calcium antagonists, surgical treatment is gaining increasingly in importance since observations of the clinical results are encouraging. With the M-mode echography an diagnostic method is available which is highly efficient.