[Cardiomyopathies and myocarditis].

The authors discuss recent findings regarding cardiomyopathies, assembled recently due to the association of clinical and experimental cardiology. The main attention is paid to the pathogenesis of cardiomyopathies from the aspect of metabolic disorders of the heart muscle at the cellular and subcellular level. The differential diagnosis in relation to myocarditis is still a serious problem in cardiology: acute myocarditis is not a myocardiopathy, there exists, however, a close relationship between viral myocarditis and the development of dilatation cardiomyopathies. Echocardiography is one of the most important diagnostic examinations.