MINI-SYMPOSIUM

Acute pericardial disease: approach to the aetiologic diagnosis

G Permanyer-Miralda

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Gaietà Permanyer
Servei de Cardiologia, Hospital General Vall d’Hebron, Pg. Vall d’Hebron 119-129, 08035 Barcelona, Spain; gpermany@vhebron.net

Keywords: acute pericardial disease; acute idiopathic pericarditis

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Acute pericardial disease includes acute pericarditis (friction rub, or characteristic pain and ECG) and cardiac tamponade. The strategy for its aetiologic diagnosis can be quite simple, because it is either associated with other conditions (such as myocardial infarction, collagen vascular disease, uraemia, or neoplasia) which give the correct clue to aetiology or, when presenting in isolation in developed countries, it is so called idiopathic and usually self limited in most cases. However, in comparatively few instances acute pericardial disease presenting in isolation may be caused by specific treatable diseases (mostly tuberculosis or neoplasia). It may then raise considerable diagnostic problems. Recent developments, such as pericardioscopy,^1,2 and classical procedures such as pericardiocentesis or pericardial biopsy, may appear to be helpful; however, judicious use of invasive diagnostic procedures should always imply a systematic diagnostic reasoning based on the prevalence of specific diagnoses. Although acute pericardial disease can be caused by a vast . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Soler-Soler, J., Sagristà-Sauleda, J. (2009). CHAPTER 19 Pericardial Disease. ESC Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine 2: med-9780199566990-chapter-med-9780199566990-chapter [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Imazio, M., Cecchi, E., Demichelis, B., Ierna, S., Demarie, D., Ghisio, A., Pomari, F., Coda, L., Belli, R., Trinchero, R. (2007). Indicators of Poor Prognosis of Acute Pericarditis. Circulation 115: 2739-2744 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Little, W. C., Freeman, G. L. (2006). Pericardial Disease. Circulation 113: 1622-1632 [Full Text]  
• Maggiolini, S., Osculati, G., Vitale, G. (2005). Utility and safety of diagnostic pericardiocentesis. Eur Heart J 26: 1046-1047 [Full Text]  
• Lange, R. A., Hillis, L. D. (2004). Acute Pericarditis. NEJM 351: 2195-2202 [Full Text]