[Cardiomyopathies in the practice of sports medicine]

In the past 10 years, cardiomyopathy has been diagnosed in 16 athletes, out of them in 13 this abnormality has been ascertained for the first time when they were examined or they were in the outpatient department. The paper provides clinical and instrumental findings of 13 patients with hypertrophic cardiopathy and 3 with dilated cardiomyopathy whose diagnosis was established by making a differential diagnosis of congenital and acquired heart diseases, coronary heart disease, essential hypertension and athletic heart. Most athletes with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy has an asymptomatic or mild natural history.