Discussion
Diagnosis With Brief Discussion
- Diagnosis
- Postpericardiotomy syndrome
- Radiologic Findings
- Fig 1) Posteroanterior chest radiograph on postoperative day 4 shows minimal bilateral effusions and normal heart size. The radiograph shows two pectus bars across the middle and lower lung zones, respectively. A chest tube is noted in the right hemithorax.
(Fig 2) Posteroanterior chest radiograph, obtained one month after the surgery, shows enlarged cardiac shadow from pericardial effusion which correlated with onset of clinical symptoms. Obliteration of the right and left lateral costophrenic angles is still present.
(Fig 3) Contrast-enhanced CT at the level of the ventricles show moderate amount of pericardial effusion, with diffuse pericardial enhancement.
(Fig 4) Posteroanterior chest radiograph, obtained one month after initiation of NSAID and steroid therapy, shows normalization of lateral costophrenic angles and cardiac size, indicating resolving of pleural and pericardial effusions.
- Brief Review
- Postpericardiotomy syndrome (PPS) is a relatively common (10-40%) and troublesome complication following cardiac surgery and occurring a few days to several weeks after the surgical operation that involves entry into the pericardium. It is thought to be the result of an immune response of the epicardial layer of the myocardium. The clinical symptoms of PPS with fever and chest pain predominating, and delayed in onset, reflect the pleuropericardial involvement. Postpericardiotomy syndrome usually manifests as a mild, self-limited inflammatory illness. The radiographic findings in the immediate postoperative period (the first 3 postoperative days) do not differ in those patients who later develop PPS and those who do not. Radiographic abnormalities develop almost always within 2 days either before or after the onset of the clinical manifestations. According to the study by Kaminsky et al. (38 patients), they include pleural and pericardial effusion (n=11), pleural effusion alone (n=11), pericardial effusion alone (n=4), pleural effusion and pericardial effusion and pulmonary infiltrates (n=3), and pleural effusion and pulmonary infiltrates (n=1). In none of their patients were pulmonary infiltrates seen without pleural or pericardial effusions. Steroids are widely used and there is prompt relief of symtoms, usually within 24-48 hr. Improvement is also reflected by normalization of the chest radiograph. In a recent trial, colchicine was shown to be efficacious in the prevention of the PPS.
- References
- 1. Kaminsky ME, Rodan BA, Osborne DR, Chen JT, Sealy WC, Putman CE. Postpericardiotomy syndrome. AJR Am J Roentgenol 1982; 138:503-508.
2. Engle MA, McCabe JC, Ebert PA, Zabriskie J. The Postpericardiotomy syndrome and antiheart antibodies. Circulation 1974; 49:401-406.
3. Eguchi T, Yoshida K, Hamanaka K, Kurai M. Colchicine as an effective treatment for postpericardiotomy syndrome following a lung lobectomy. Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg 2010; 11:869-871.
- Keywords
- pericardium, non-infectious inflammation, inflammation,