[Inflammatory cardiomyopathy and myocarditis].

We describe diagnosis, differential diagnosis, multimodality imaging and medical and invasive diagnostic treatment in patients with inflammatory cardiomyopathy and myocarditis under etiological considerations in reference to a landmark position paper of the Working Group Myocardial and Pericardial Diseases of the European Society of Cardiology together with recent developments in diagnosis and treatment. Diagnosis of the symptomatic patient is the assessment of etiology of inflammatory cardiomyopathy, followed by the clinical presentation, course, treatment option and prognosis. Viral myocarditis in its different facets can clearly be separated from autoreactive forms by histological and molecular methods in the endomyocardial biopsy, thus leading to an individualized targeted therapy beyond heart failure treatment.