Abstract
Cardiomyopathies are myocardial diseases, which are divided into different phenotypes: Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), arrhythmogenic rechtventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), left-ventricular-non-compaction cardiomyopathy (LVNC) and restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM). While gene mutations are responsible for considerable proportions of DCM and RCM, the other cardiomyopathies HCM, ARVC and LVNC are considered to be solely caused genetically. HCM is characterized by mutations of genes encoding sarcomeric proteins, ARVC is a disease of the desmosome while DCM, RCM and LVNC have diverse genetic causes.