Ján Murín, Arnošt Martínek
Authors present review of heart failure topic in gravidity. During pregnancy and mainly during the labour the organism of a woman goes through important circulatory changes. These can contribute to development and/or deterioration of heart failure when a woman has a cardiac disease. The contributing factor is an increase of circulatory blood volume during pregnancy. Authors concentrate here their attention to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (20 % of patients with this disease develop heart failure and/or serious arrhythmias during gravidity) and to peripartal cardiomyopathy (heart failure during the 3rd trimester, thrombo-embolic events). It is important to follow the course of gravidity by an experienced clinician.