Introduction Dilated cardiomyopathy is one of the most frequent causes of heart failure in the world, which is now considered a major public health problem both in developed countries where it is predominant, especially in the elderly, over 65 years of age and in patients on long-term treatment for heart disease, and in underdeveloped countries.The diagnosis of cardiomyopathies is essentially based on para-clinical examinations, more precisely on echocardiography. In Haiti, cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of hospitalization and mortality. These diseases are the main causes of hospitalization at the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH), the largest hospital in the country, and represent 30% of all cases received in the internal medicine department. Methodology This is a retrospective quantitative study conducted on a sample of patients in the Cardiology Unit of the Internal Medicine Department of the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH).The study was conducted on 54 patients registered in the Cardiology Unit, during the period from January 8, 2014 to June 11, 2014 for heart failure. Result and discussion The 50 patients showed a predominance for women, 31 (62%) versus 19 (38%) for men, P=0.04. The results of our study showed that the majority of patients are female (62%), which is similar to the last study conducted on the unit by Dr. Malebranche, who found 62.4%The data showed that the reference examination for the confirmatory diagnosis of cardiomyopathy is echocardiography, with 92% of diagnoses. It should be noted that the other diagnoses were made on an echocardiographic basis but were not complete. These findings are similar to data from a recently published Swedish study in which cardiomyopathy was diagnosed by echocardiography in 99.6% of cases. For chest radiography, 100% of cases have cardiomegaly.65.96% of all heart failure cases are dilated cardiomyopathies compared to undiluted cardiomyopathies 14.89%, p<0.0001
Acute Heart Failure in an Internal Medicine Department: A Prospective Study
