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Reminder of important clinical lesson
CASE REPORT
Pyopericardium progressing to tamponade in a patient with immune thrombocytopenia
  1. Manoj Gopalakrishnan1,
  2. Robin George Manappallil1,
  3. Harilal Nambiar2,
  4. John Francis John3
  1. 1Internal Medicine, Baby Memorial Hospital, Calicut, India
  2. 2Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, Baby Memorial Hospital, Calicut, India
  3. 3Cardiology, Baby Memorial Hospital, Calicut, Kerala, India
  1. Correspondence to Dr Robin George Manappallil, drrobingeorgempl{at}gmail.com, gm.varghese{at}hotmail.com

Summary

Pericardial effusion can develop during any stage of pericarditis, and small effusions that appear rapidly can cause cardiac tamponade. Pyopericardium is a rare aetiology for tamponade. This is a case of an elderly diabetic lady, on steroid therapy for immune thrombocytopenia, who presented with fever and acute dyspnoea. She developed cardiac tamponade due to pyopericardium with Staphylococcus as the causative organism. Staphylococcus pyopericardium, in the absence of a primary focus of infection, progressing to tamponade is an uncommon scenario.

  • pericardial disease
  • haematology (incl blood transfusion)

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2018-225009

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors MG: revision of manuscript and treating physician. RGM: concept and design of manuscript, revision of manuscript and treating physician. HN: critical revision of manuscript and treating cardiothoracic surgeon. JFJ: critical revision of manuscript and treating cardiologist.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.