Cardiomyopathy

Cardiomyopathies are mechanical disorders of the heart muscle that can lead to heart failure and lethal arrhythmias. Still accounting for over 20,000 deaths annually in the United States alone, these disorders are often misdiagnosed and mistreated. The ability to generate human heart cells in vitro via the use of induced pluripotency technologies is now allowing researchers to study cardiomyopathies caused by known genetic mutations. This chapter describes the clinical features, classifications and current treatments for cardiomyopathy and provides a guide of how cardiac cells generated from patient-specific human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have been used to elucidate important pathological mechanisms and propose novel treatments for this class of lethal cardiac conditions.