This book reviews the basic knowledge about the cardiomyopathies and re-enforces the well-known definitions and classification of cardiomyopathies and specific heart muscle diseases, respectively. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining the classification into hypertrophic, dilated and restrictive cardiomyopathies, even though there are exceptions. The term "realisations" in the title is used in the sense of "achievements" and alludes to the progress in the understanding of heart muscle diseases over the last three decades and also to the areas of knowledge still not fully explored, for...