What are the symptoms of pericardial effusion

The heart is one of the important organs in our body. If any discomfort occurs, it needs to be checked in time. There are many factors that cause pericardial effusion, including bacterial infection, ventricular enlargement, etc. We can learn more about the symptoms of pericardial effusion to identify the disease.

The disease is more common in women, and the age of onset is mostly menopause. Patients are often able to carry out daily activities without experiencing discomfort. When symptoms occur, they are mostly shortness of breath and chest pain. Some patients experience symptoms of pericardial obstruction in the early stages of the disease, which gradually subside or even disappear as the disease progresses. Many cases of this disease are discovered during routine physical examinations and are easily misdiagnosed as heart enlargement. Because there is almost no history of acute pericarditis, it is often impossible to determine the timing of the disease.

The disease has good hemodynamic tolerance. Since pericardial effusion increases gradually, the pericardial capacity has already adapted to the growth of the effusion to a certain extent, which means that the accumulation of a large amount of pericardial effusion only causes a slight increase in intrapericardial pressure, which manifests as non-restrictive pericardial effusion. Therefore, pericardial obstruction rarely or almost never occurs. Pericardial obstruction is only likely to occur when the pericardial effusion suddenly and dramatically increases, the adaptive expansion of the pericardium is reduced, and the effusion increases, manifesting as restrictive pericardial effusion.

Spontaneous resolution of pericardial effusions has been reported. However, since this may be related to the treatment of the cause, it remains uncertain whether the effusion in chronic idiopathic pericardial effusion will disappear on its own.

There is still a lack of precise and unified definition of this disease. Generally, patients who meet the following characteristics are classified into this disease: ① There is a large amount of pericardial effusion, which has been confirmed by UCG; ② The amount of pericardial effusion remains basically stable during the observation period; ③ The pericardial effusion persists for at least 3 months; ④ The patient has been excluded from any systemic disease, regardless of whether the disease may be related to the pericardial effusion; ⑤ Systematic etiological examinations are negative. This disease is sometimes called "chronic effusion pericarditis" or "chronic idiopathic pericarditis", but these names are gradually being avoided because in most cases patients do not have symptoms of pericarditis. The incidence of this disease in pericardial diseases is approximately 2% to 3.5%.

Clinically, the disease is usually diagnosed after routine chest X-ray examination reveals an enlarged cardiac shadow, and then UCG and systemic examinations, as well as etiological examinations, exclude specific lesions such as tuberculous pericarditis and rheumatic pericarditis.