A study has been made of 62 patients with constrictive pericarditis. There was considerable variation from the classical description of the disease. It is hoped that the findings may be of use, because both diagnosis and treatment can sometimes cause perplexity. The atiology and mode of onset of constrictive pericarditis will be considered first, since ,these have important effects on the final...

Pericardiectomy is the standard treatment in patients with chronic constrictive pericarditis who have persistent symptoms. However, myocardial atrophy with prolonged pericardial constriction and abrupt increase in venous return can lead to heart failure with volume overload after pericardial decompression, especially in the right ventricle (RV). We experienced a 44 year old male patient who dev...

PERICARDIECTOMY for constrictive pericarditis was first successfully performed just over 50 years ago' and has subsequently become the accepted definitive method of treatment. Postoperative clinical evaluations during this time have indicated good to excellent results in the majority of patients.2 8 Despite the wide use of cardiac catheterization in the preoperative evaluation of patients with ...

Because of uncertainty existing in respect to the etiologic factors in certain cases of constrictive pericarditis, an analysis of 25 proven cases and of additional series from the literature was conducted. It was evident that a fairly consistent clinical syndrome developed, but the factor of myocardial insufficiency deserves as much consideration as actual constriction by the pericardium. The s...

CHRONIC constrictive pericarditis produces a characteristic clinical picture' that results from a characteristic eirculatorv alteration, namely, restriction of ventricular filling. Pericardial constriction is accompanied by typical abnormalities of right atrial and right ventricular pressure-pulse contours,2 and although the majority of patients are improved clinically after pericardiectomy, so...

Seven patients with constrictive pericarditis associated with collagen disease underwent pericardiectomy with good results in all but one. The collagen disease was confirmed as rheumatoid arthritis in five patients, but in two its nature remained obscure. In one case the illness was marked by a persistent eosinophilia and eosinophilic infiltration of the pericardium. The association of constric...

Constrictive pericarditis is an uncommon disease in children, usually difficult to diagnose. We present the case of a 14-year-old boy with a previous history of tuberculosis and right heart failure, in whom constrictive pericarditis was diagnosed. The case highlights the need to integrate all information, including clinical data, noninvasive cardiac imaging, and even invasive hemodynamic evalua...

Constrictive pericarditis can lead to paradoxical interventricular septal motion. Displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides a method for quantifying myocardial motion and strain. A case of constrictive pericarditis is presented and the diastolic 'septal bounce' is clearly evident in both anatomical and DENSE ciné MRI images. (See video link t...

In a consecutive series of 32 cases of chronic constrictive pericarditis treated by pericardiectomy during the past 25 years, four were attributable to rheumatoid disease, two to trauma, one to sarcoidosis, and four, at a maximum, to tuberculosis. In the remaining 21 cases of undetermined aetiology there was no evidence of tuberculosis. It appears, therefore, that tuberculosis was not a common ...