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🫀 Cardiomyopathies: the real risk is not the disease… it’s missing it
We often focus on treatment.
But this paper highlights a more uncomfortable truth:
👉 failure to diagnose cardiomyopathies is still a major problem
⚠️ The striking finding
Most medicolegal cases are not about complex management.
👉 They are about:
Missed diagnosis
Delayed recognition
Poor communication
➡️ The basics—not the advanced care—are failing
📊 Even more concerning
Many cases present with cardiac arrest or sudden death (~59%)
Diagnosis often made too late—or never
👉 The first presentation = the last opportunity
🧠 Where are we missing it?
Primary care → no ECG / delayed referral
Specialist level → misinterpretation or under-recognition
Pathology → misclassification (e.g. CAD instead of cardiomyopathy)
➡️ Failure happens across the entire pathway
🧬 The hidden consequence
👉 This is not just about one patient
Cardiomyopathies are often genetic
➡️ Missed diagnosis =
No family screening
Preventable deaths in relatives
⚠️ Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM)
Interestingly:
👉 Rarely reported in litigation
Not because it’s rare—
👉 but because it’s hard to diagnose
💬 And then comes communication
One of the most frequent failures:
👉 Not informing families
➡️ The medico-legal implications are huge
➡️ The clinical implications are even bigger
🤖 A new layer of complexity: AI
Increasing use in ECG/imaging
But who is responsible for interpretation?
👉 We are entering a new era of shared (and unclear) liability
🌍 System-level issue
Need for specialist inherited cardiac centres
Better education
Structured diagnostic pathways
➡️ Diagnosis is not just clinical skill
👉 it’s system design
🔥 Take-home
Cardiomyopathies are not rare.
They are underdiagnosed.
👉 And in this field:
Missing the diagnosis is the biggest risk factor of all
#Cardiology #Cardiomyopathy #SCD #Genetics #CardioGenetics #MedicalEducation #PrecisionMedicine 🫀🧬
doi.org/10.1093/ejhf/x…
English
