[The course of dilated cardiomyopathy (long-term follow-up data)]

A long-term (1-8 years) prospective follow-up of 224 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy permitted identification of 3 variants of the disease run: benign (9.4%), protracted (51.8%) and malignant (38.8%). These variants are characterized by different gravity and time course changes in cardiovascular function and pumping capacity affections, in hypertrophy of the cardiac muscle, in incidence rate, time and causes of lethal outcomes.