Symptoms:

• Cough
• Difficulty breathing
  • At night
  • Especially with exertion
  • When lying flat
• Fatigue, poor exercise tolerance
• Swelling of the abdomen
• Swelling of the feet and ankles

Signs and tests:

An examination may show:

• Signs of heart failure
• Fluid backup into the lungs, hands and feet, gastrointestinal tract, and liver
• Distended neck veins
• Lung crackles and abnormal or distant heart sounds when listening to the chest with a stethoscope (auscultation)

Tests for restrictive cardiomyopathy include:

• Chest CT scan
• Chest MRI scan
• Chest x-ray
• Coronary angiography
• ECG (electrocardiogram)
• Echocardiogram and Doppler study

Restrictive cardiomyopathy may be hard to tell apart from constrictive pericarditis. A biopsy of the heart muscle or cardiac catheterization may help confirm the diagnosis.