Alcoholic Heart Disease

Generality

Alcoholic heart disease is a heart disease that arises from excessive alcohol consumption. From a medical point of view, it is included in the list of so-called dilated cardiomyopathies.

Generally asymptomatic at the beginning, in its most advanced stages, alcoholic heart disease is responsible for symptoms such as: breathing difficulties (dyspnea) under exertion and at rest, tachycardia, chest pain, edema in several parts of the body, syncope, abnormal heart beat and problems urinary; moreover, always in its most advanced stages, it has a high probability of giving rise to a series of complications, such as heart failure, pulmonary embolism or cardiac arrest.
Normally, the diagnostic process for identifying alcoholic heart disease includes: physical examination, medical history, chest x-ray, chest CT scan, echocardiogram and electrocardiogram.
The therapy mainly revolves around the immediate abolition of any alcoholic substances.