Highlights the rare presentation of acute myocarditis as an initial manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus and the utility of echocardiography for rapid diagnosis.
Acute myocarditis may signal initial SLE in young women; case reports leave open echocardiography's broader diagnostic role.
Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease of unknown etiology which affects various parts of body. SLE can involve all parts of the heart including the pericardium, myocardium, endocardium, heart valves and coronary arteries. Cardiopathy of SLE is the third common cause of death in all patients with SLE. Although cardiopulmonary symptoms are common in SLE, symptomatic acute lupus myocarditis is a very rare and fatal complication of SLE. We report here on a 20-year-old female patient with acute myocarditis as a initial manifestation of SLE and rapidly diagnosed using echocardiogram.
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Kang et al. (2007) studied this question.
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