Several years ago, researchers from the University of Virginia (UVA) and the University of Oxford announced a joint project involving a large international registry of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients to facilitate research into HCM. Backed with funding from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, this project, known as the HCM Registry, includes data from 2,750 patients with HCM at 44 sites in six countries. 

This week, researchers from UVA announced their first findings from this registry which suggest that HCM patients can be separated into two basic groups:

1.  Patients with a known genetic mutation who are not obstructed but have scarring of the heart muscle;
2. Patients who do not have a known genetic mutation and do not exhibit scarring, but who do have a significant amount of obstruction to blood flow.

According to Dr. Christopher Kramer of UVA, this information should provide doctors with information that allows them to better assess the degree of risk to any particular patient, and to help inform a treatment strategy for each patient based on his or her unique profile.