Background: The characteristics of myopericarditis include cardiac symptom or manifestation associated with systemic inflammation, ECG change, cardiac marker elevation or LV systolic dysfunction. In some clinical setting, it may be difficult to distinguish from transient left ventricular dysfunction shown in cases of severe infection. We aimed to investigate the clinical presentation and echocardiographic characteristics among patients with myocarditis or infection-associated cardiomyopathy(IACM). Method: We reviewed the records of patients with myopericarditis and patients with IACM between April 2004 and October 2008. 13 patients were enrolled into myopericarditis (group 1). The patients with severe infectious disease, whose LV ejection fraction(LVEF) was initially less than 45% and recovered to over 50% with more than 10% incremental change, were enrolled into IACM (group 2)(n=18), excluding other than infection as causes of LV dysfunction. We restrospectively analyzed the characteristics of patient, clinical manifestation, laboratory data, electrocardiographic and echocardiographic findings of two groups. Results: Mean age was 48짹18 years. 17 patients(54%) were male. Among patients with IACM, most common infection was pneumonia(41%), followed by pulmonary tuberculosis(18%). In myocarditis group, most common ECG finding was ST segment elevation(n=4, 30%) and the others include ventricular arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation, T wave inversion, etc. whereas most common ECG finding in IACM group was T wave inversion(n=9, 50%). Mean peak Troponin-��� level was 13.09ng/ml (group l) vs. 1.85ng/ml (group 2); Mean LV EF was initially 41.3% vs. 31% and it was not related to mortality in myopericarditis; Mean Initial ventricular wall thickness of myopericarditis was greater than them of IACM(p=0.03); However, elevation of inflammatory markers, such as white blood cell count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, serum C-reactive protein concentration, was more common in IACM than myopericarditis(p=0.004). Three patients of myopericarditis were expired and all of them had decreased LV ejection fraction and increased thickness of ventricular wall in follow-up echocardiography. Conclusion : In myopericarditis, elevation of systemic inflammatory marker was less common and, ventricular wall thickening and cardiac marker elevation were more common than IACM. LV dysfunction in cases of myopericarditis was not related to the mortality, but decrease of LVEF and increase of ventricular wall thickness on follow-up echocardiography could be useful to identify higher risk of mortality.