You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Unusual presentation of more common disease/injury
CASE REPORT
Pericardial effusion as first presentation of disseminated non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
  1. Lauren Christina Giudicatti1,
  2. Melita Cirillo2,
  3. Benjamin King1
  1. 1Department of Cardiology, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
  2. 2Department of Haematology, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Lauren Christina Giudicatti, lauren.giudicatti{at}health.wa.gov.au

Summary

A 46-year-old woman with quiescent lupus presented with worsening pleuritic chest pain and dyspnoea. Bedside echocardiogram confirmed large pericardial effusion with cardiac tamponade. Emergency bedside pericardiocentesis was performed. Pericardial fluid cytology confirmed diffuse large B cell lymphoma, stage four on positron emission tomography. Conventional rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisolone chemotherapy achieved good response in all sites except the pericardium. Progressive cardiac involvement was complicated by atrioventricular conduction block requiring permanent pacemaker. Second-line palliative chemotherapy was performed.

  • cardiovascular medicine
  • pericardial disease
  • pacing and electrophysiology
  • haematology (incl blood transfusion)
  • cancer - see oncology

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2018-225926

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors LG, MC and BK were involved in patient’s care. MC contributed significantly to authorship of the paper. BK contributed to authorship and final review of paper.

    • 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.