How symptoms guide surgery decisions for people with thickened heart muscle

Hearing that someone you love may need heart surgery can be scary, especially when you're also trying to understand an unfamiliar heart condition. In hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, treatment usually starts with medication. However, for some people, surgery becomes the best option when symptoms continue despite medical therapy, explains Joseph Dearani, M.D., a cardiovascular surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

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