A Rare Case of Spontaneous Pneumopericardium
Journal Title: Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research (BJSTR) - Year 2017, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
Pneumopericardium is defined as a collection of air or gas in the pericardial cavity, its causes are usually secondary to trauma or mechanical ventilation, but spontaneous cases are very rare [1]. A 54-year-old man presented with a 6-hour history of acute typical retrosternal chest pain that occurred during minor exertion and was persistent from the start and not relieved by analgesics. His medical history was unremarkable, he was a heavy smoker. His clinical examination was unremarkable. His electrocardiogram (ECG) showed ST segment elevation in the inferior leads with PR depression in the anterior leads. His chest X-ray (CXR) lead (Figure 1) to a suspicion of intra-pericardial collection of air. His laboratory results were all normal except for mild elevation in cardiac enzymes. Echocardiography showed normal study, the suspicion of the intra-pericardial air collection had led us to do a chest computed tomography (CT) (Figure 2) which revealed the presence of air inside the pericardium. The patient was still in intractable pain with serial elevating cardiac enzymes so we decided to do coronary angiography that revealed normal coronaries (Figure 3). This case demonstrates the importance of good interpretation of the chest X-ray for exclusion of non-coronary causes of chest pain.
Authors and Affiliations
Abdallah Almaghraby
Keywords
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- EP ID EP565153
- DOI 10.26717/BJSTR.2017.01.000101
- Views 322
- Downloads 0
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