The Italian Study Group on Cardiomyopathies organized in Florence in April 1997, eight years after the first successful meeting, the second international symposium devoted to "Advances in Cardiomyopathies". In these years exceptional progress has been made in the field of heart muscle diseases, in clinical research as well as in molecular biology, molec- ular genetics., pathophysiology and treatment. Many of these advances were presented and discussed in Florence by a distinguished team of international experts. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was addressed in ten papers; in the first one Seidman reported the results obtained by the use of molecular genetic tech- niques which showed that hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a heterogeneous disorder caused by different mutations of different genes and discussed the clinical role and significance of genetic testing. Original data regarding the natural history and prognosis of symptomatic patients were obtained in the Italian multicentric study (Cecchi, Lazzeroni), while Baroldi discussed the clinico-pathologic spectrum of the disease in severely symptomatic patients treated with heart transplantation. Sudden death in the young (Basso), the identification and management of high risk patients (Elliott), the clinical importance and the problems of detec- tion of ischemia (Camici) were deeply discussed as well as the indications and results of different types of treatment: medical, surgical, DDD pacing (Spirito, Betocchi, Schoendube).