Family screening
All first degree family members of the affected individual should be screened for ACM. This is used to establish the pattern of inheritance. Screening should begin during the teenage years unless otherwise indicated. Screening tests include:

Echocardiogram
EKG
Signal averaged EKG
Holter monitoring
Cardiac MRI
Exercise stress test

Prognosis
There is a long asymptomatic lead-time in individuals with ACM. While this is a genetically transmitted disease, individuals in their teens may not have any characteristics of ACM on screening tests. Many individuals have symptoms associated with ventricular tachycardia, such as palpitations, light-headedness, or syncope. Others may have symptoms and signs related to right ventricular failure, such as lower extremity edema, or liver congestion with elevated hepatic enzymes. ACM is a progressive disease. Over time, the right ventricle becomes more involved, leading to right ventricular failure. The right ventricle will fail before there is left ventricular dysfunction. However, by the time the individual has signs of overt right ventricular failure, there will be histological involvement of the left ventricle. Eventually, the left ventricle will also become involved, leading to bi-ventricular failure. Signs and symptoms of left ventricular failure may become evident, including congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and an increased incidence of thromboembolic events. Epidemiology
The prevalence of ACM is about 1/10,000 in the general population in the United States, although some studies have suggested that it may be as common as 1/1,000. Recently, 1/200 were found to be carriers of mutations that predispose to ACM.
Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD), or arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), most commonly is an inherited heart disease.ACM is caused by genetic defects of the parts of heart muscle (also called myocardium or cardiac muscle) known as desmosomes, areas on the surface of heart muscle cells which link the cells together. The desmosomes are composed of several proteins, and many of those proteins can have harmful mutations. ARVC can also develop in intense endurance athletes in the absence of desmosomal abnormalities. Exercise-induced ARVC cause possibly is a result of excessive right ventricular wall stress during high intensity exercise.The disease is a type of non-ischemic cardiomyopathy that primarily involves the right ventricle, though cases of exclusive left ventricular disease have been reported. It is characterized by hypokinetic areas involving the free wall of the ventricle, with fibrofatty replacement of the myocardium, with associated arrhythmias often originating in the right ventricle. The nomenclature ARVD is currently thought to be inappropriate and misleading as ACM does not involve dysplasia of the ventricular wall. Cases of ACM originating from the left ventricle led to the abandonment of the name ARVC. ACM can be found in association with diffuse palmoplantar keratoderma, and woolly hair, in an autosomal recessive condition called Naxos disease, because this genetic abnormality can also affect the integrity of the superficial layers of the skin most exposed to pressure stress. : 513 ACM is an important cause of ventricular arrhythmias in children and young adults.