Why the study?
Purulent pericarditis is an uncommon cause of cardiac tamponade, highlighting the need for critical care transport teams to be trained in high acuity-low occurrence skills like pericardiocentesis.
This case highlights the importance of critical care transport teams being trained in high-acuity, low-occurrence skills like pericardiocentesis to stabilize patients with cardiac tamponade.
Recognition of purulent pericarditis as tamponade cause remains essential in transport; this Level 5 case leaves open standardized training impact on outcomes.
This case presentation describes the clinical management and course of an adult patient found to be in cardiac tamponade secondary to purulent pericarditis. This etiology represents an uncommon cause of pericardial tamponade and highlights the importance of recognizing clinical signs of this physiological state despite the uncommon presentation. This also reinforces that critical care transport teams must be trained and facile with high acuity-low occurrence skills such as pericardiocentesis as such time-sensitive measures may be necessary to stabilize patients for transport. The patient in this case had clinical improvement after pericardiocentesis was performed and this allowed for the safe transport of the patient to a tertiary care center.
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Boardman et al. (2023) studied this question.
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