Myocardial disarray, also known as myocyte disarray, is a term to describe the loss of the normal parallel alignment of
myocytes
(the
muscle
Skeletal muscles (commonly referred to as muscles) are organs of the vertebrate muscular system and typically are attached by tendons to bones of a skeleton. The muscle cells of skeletal muscles are much longer than in the other types of muscl ...
cells
Cell most often refers to:
* Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life
Cell may also refer to:
Locations
* Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery w ...
of the
heart). Instead, the myocytes usually form circles around foci of
connective tissue
Connective tissue is one of the four primary types of animal tissue, along with epithelial tissue, muscle tissue, and nervous tissue. It develops from the mesenchyme derived from the mesoderm the middle embryonic germ layer. Connective tiss ...
. Myocardial disarray is associated with
myocardial fibrosis
Cardiac fibrosis commonly refers to the excess deposition of extracellular matrix in the cardiac muscle, but the term may also refer to an abnormal thickening of the heart valves due to inappropriate proliferation of cardiac fibroblasts. Fibrotic c ...
(the replacement of the myocytes with non-contractile
scar tissue).
Myocardial disarray can be seen in a number of disease states, including:
*
Aortic stenosis
*
Congenital heart disease
*
Hypertensive heart disease
*
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM, or HOCM when obstructive) is a condition in which the heart becomes thickened without an obvious cause. The parts of the heart most commonly affected are the interventricular septum and the ventricles. This r ...
The common factor amongst all these diseases is that they all cause varying degrees of remodelling (myocardial fibrosis) of the
ventricles.
References
External links
Myocardial disarray. A critical review
Heart diseases
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