Introduction:

Pericardial effusions are infrequent in pregnant patients, but its presence has been seen in some isolated cases without hemodynamic involvement. Therefore, neither outcome nor treatment of these cases are described.

Objectives:

To characterize pregnant patients with pericardial effusion, according to clinical, epidemiological and laboratory variables and determine the recovery time from post-delivery pericardial effusion.

Method:

A prospective descriptive observational study was carried out with 15 pregnant women with pericardial effusion, diagnosed by transthoracic echocardiogram, intentionally selected from a population of 256 pregnant women who were treated at the Hospital Universitario Gineco-Obstétrico Mariana Grajales in the city of Santa Clara (Villa Clara, Cuba) during the period from July 2018 to March 2019.

Results:

Of the 256 patients, only 15 (5.9%) presented pericardial effusion. Eighty percent of these effusions were found in patients with pre-eclampsia. A total of 66.7% were aged between 20 and 29 years and 73.3% were white. Effusions were predominantly mild (66.7%) and never severe, and the affected patients also had chronic high blood pressure (40%), obesity (20%) and collagen disease (13.3%). In 86.7% of cases the pericardial effusion resolved in the first 15 days postpartum.

Conclusions:

Pericardial effusion was more frequently found in patients with pre-eclampsia, chronic arterial hypertension, proteinuria, hypoproteinemia and hipoalbuminemia, and in most cases resolved within the first 15 days postpartum.

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