Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes of Patients with Constrictive Pericarditis Following Pericardiectomy: An Observational Study

TL;DR

This study examines the clinical features and outcomes of patients who had surgery for constrictive pericarditis, finding that most cases were caused by tuberculosis and that patients showed significant improvement.

Contribution

The study provides insights into the clinical characteristics and outcomes of pericardiectomy for constrictive pericarditis in a single-center observational setting.

Findings

The most common cause of constrictive pericarditis in the study was tuberculosis.

All patients showed symptomatic improvement post-surgery, with most reaching NYHA class I or II.

Echocardiographic findings included annulus reversus, septal bounce, and calcified pericardium.

Abstract

Pericardiectomy remains the standard treatment in constrictive pericarditis. The study was aimed to assess the clinical characteristics, etiology and the outcome of patients who underwent pericardiectomy for chronic constrictive pericarditis.

Single center based retrospective cohort study was conducted on the patients who underwent standard pericardiectomy at our center from January 2021 to December 2023. Structured questionnaire was used to observe the record of the participants. Data was entered in Epi-data and exported to IBM SPSS Statistics version 16 for analysis. Ethical approval was obtained from Institute Review Committee, Nobel Medical College and Teaching Hospital (Ref no: 121/2024).

The study involved 17 patients, with a mean age of 41.76±13.16 years. Male were higher in number with 12 (70.60%) of total cases. The echocardiography findings included annulus reversus, septal bounce, calcified pericardium, and congested Inferior Vena-Cava. Post-operatively, all 17 patients improved to New York Heart Association (NYHA) function class I or II (11 and 6 patients respectively) from (NYHA) functional class III or IV. The average intensive care unit stay was 3±0.7 days and hospital stay were 9.88±2.86 days. Histopathology report revealed tuberculosis in 15 (88.23%) cases.

The most common cause of constrictive pericarditis was tuberculosis and symptomatic improvement was noticed in all patients.