BACKGROUND To determine the influence of right ventricular function in patients with constrictive pericarditis (CP) undergoing surgery and to compare the outcomes of patients who received surgery with those managed medically. METHODS Patients with the diagnosis of CP and healthy volunteers were recruited from January 2006 to November 2011. Patients with CP chose to either receive pericardiect...

BACKGROUND The clinical spectrum of constrictive pericarditis (CP) has been affected by a change in incidence of etiological factors. We sought to determine the impact of these changes on the outcome of pericardiectomy. METHODS AND RESULTS The contemporary spectrum of CP in 135 patients (76% male) evaluated at the Mayo Clinic from 1985 to 1995 was compared with that of a historic cohort. Nota...

The management of pericardial diseases is largely empirical because of the relative lack of randomized trials. The first published guidelines1,2 are a first attempt to organize current knowledge. At present, no specific guidelines have been issued by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology. After a literature review including a Medline search with the MeSH terms “peric...

Between 1955 and 1972, eight children receiving mediastinal irradiation for intrathoracic malignancy developed constrictive pericarditis. Six of these followed irradiation for Hodgkin's disease and represent 7% of 86 children receiving irradiation for that disease. In patients with Hodgkin's disease, the development of constrictive pericarditis was related to the dose of radiation and the use o...

Given the fact that, in the ‘constricting differential . . . ’, the successful management hinged crucially on the identification of the constrictive component of pericarditis, the latter component typically characterized by marked elevation of the jugular venous pressure (JVP), it would be useful to know how elevated that parameter was in the subject of the case report. In one series, 75% of 62...

The management of pericardial diseases is largely empirical because of the relative lack of randomized trials. The first published guidelines1,2 are a first attempt to organize current knowledge. At present, no specific guidelines have been issued by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology. After a literature review including a Medline search with the MeSH terms “peric...

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...