Pericarditis

Posted by admin on August 29th, 2008 at 11:27pm

Peri-card-it is; according to Greek language, peri means around, pericardium means around the heart and itis means inflammation. Pericardium is a specialized tissue sac around the heart thus pericarditis means the inflammation of the pericardium. Pericarditis is further distinguished on the type of the liquid oozing out of the inflammation such as of serous type, maybe of purulent in nature, may contain fibrin, and maybe of hemorrhagic type.

The case of acute pericarditis is common than the case of chronic pericarditis, and it can come in front as a complicated type of infections or a heart attack. The commonest sign of pericarditis is chest pain which radiates towards the back and is ameliorated by sitting in up-forward position and is aggravated in the lying down position. There are many other signs of pericarditis such as; anxiety, fever, fatigue and dry cough. Many times pericarditis is misdiagnosed by the physician as the myocardial infarction, in common words it is known as heart attack.

There are various causes of pericarditis. Oftentimes the cause is unknown. Following are the causes of the pericarditis:

• Idiopathic: The cause behind the illness is not known.
• Viral infection: Many times it is developed followed by a minor viral type of illness mostly by the Coxsackie virus.
• Bacterial infection: Commonly caused by Tuberculosis bacillus. Pericarditis where the tuberculosis is the causative factor, then this condition is quite difficult to diagnose. However, to confirm it, the culturing Mycobacterium tuberculosis from aspirated fluid from the pericardium or pericardial biopsy is required. One system called as ‘Tygerberg scoring system’ is helpful for the physicians to find out whether the cause of pericarditis is tuberculosis or any other.
• Fungal infection.
• Different types of immunologic conditions such as Lupus erythematosus, this is commonly found in females.
• Dressler’s syndrome that is followed by the Myocardial Infarction.
• Any type of trauma to the heart, maybe like any inflammation or infection followed by puncture.
• Uremia: The urea i.e. the nitrogenous waste products that are normally excreted in the urine get accumulated in the blood.
• Some Malignancy
• As a side effect of some drugs such as cyclosporine, isoniazid and hydralazine.
• Maybe the result of the induced Radiation.
• Aortic dissection may be also one of the causes.
• Tetracyclines are also found to be a causative factor for pericarditis.

Most of the cases of acute type of idiopathic pericarditis get resolved without any type of complications. Complications may be like pericardial effusion, constrictive pericarditis and cardiac tamponade.

Fibrinous pericarditis is one of the exudative types of inflammation. Here the pericardium is penetrated by the fibrinous exudate. This is containing the chains of fibrin as well as the leukocytes.

The treatment in the viral pericarditis or the idiopathic pericarditis is obtained with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, but many other severe types of cases may need the treatments like antibiotics, pericardiocentesis, colchicine, steroids and oftentimes a surgery is preferred as effective way to cure the disease. 

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