Surgical excision of a massive organized pericardial hematoma secondary to blunt trauma can successfully relieve symptoms of constrictive pericarditis.
May support surgery in rare post-traumatic constrictive pericarditis; leaves open need for prospective validation before practice change.
Massive organized pericardial hematoma secondary to blunt trauma is extremely rare. We report a case of a 69-year-old man referred with refractory ascites who was found to have a 10 x 6 x 8 cm organized pericardial hematoma with hemodynamic characteristics consistent with constrictive pericarditis. The cause was attributed to blunt chest trauma associated with a fall 3 years previously. Excision of the mass and removal of the constricting epicardium relieved his symptomatology. A review of the literature is included.
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Brown et al. (1996) studied this question.
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