Consensus Statement of Pericardial Diseases / Abridged Version Argentine Society of Cardiology

Abstract

Although pericardial disease is very frequent found in daily clinical practice, there are no reliable data of its epidemiology in our country or published in the international literature. The Argentine Society of Cardiology entrusted a group of experts to write the first Argentine Consensus of Pericardial Diseases. In order to complete this task, we consulted the local and international literature and created four committees, each with a pericardial syndrome: 1) Acute Pericarditis, 2) Cardiac tamponade, 3) Pericardial effusions and 4) Constrictive Pericarditis. Each committee worked independently analyzing the literature, which in its great majority is level of evidence B and C. They are mainly observational descriptive studies of a not very large number of patients and expert opinions. Recently, however, well-designed therapeutic works have begun to appear, mainly for the treatment of acute and recurrent pericarditis. The three consensuses published so far were also taken into account. The present Consensus has mainly a clinical approach. To do this, we divided the disease into pericardial syndromes. Each of the syndromes is approached from an etiological, physiopathogical, clinical and therapeutic point of view, placing special emphasis on imaging diagnosis (echocardiography, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging) which due to their recent high development (“Multimodality images”) can often provide an etiological diagnosis.