Perioperative Anesthetic Management of a Case with Severe Dilated Cardiomyopathy

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is characterized by dilatation and impaired systolic function of one or both ventricles. Five to eight people per 100,000 develop this disorder each year. It is more common in men. Malignant arrhythmias are the most common cause of death in DCM1. Around 50 % of cases of nonischaemic dilated cardiomyopathy are idiopathic. Other causes are familial, infectious, infiltrative and connective tissue diseases. This is a report of successful anesthetic management of a patient with severe DCM undergoing a surgical procedure using combined thoracic epidural analgesia (TEA) and general anesthesia (GA)