Prevalence of clinically occult cardiomyopathy in chronic alcoholism.

The mean absolute heart weight and mean heart weight to body weight ratio of a group of 43 alcoholics, screened from 1,970 consecutive autopsy reports at the Detroit General Hospital by selecting alcoholics with only ethyl alcohol abuse as an etiology of heart disease, are compared to those of a group of similarity selected age-matched nonalcoholic controls. None of the alcoholics was clinically suspected of having had cardiomyopathy. The statistically significant increased mean absolute heart weight and heart weight to body weight ratio of the alcoholic group reflected the presence of subclinical alcoholic cardiomyopathy. In addition, several of the patients in the alcoholic group displayed gross and microscopic cardiac pathologic changes consistent with alcoholic cardiomyopathy occurring in the absence of cardiomegaly.