Abstract

CASTRO RODRIGUEZ, Araí et al. Constrictive pericarditis as a form of lung cancer presentation. Acta méd centro [online]. 2022, vol.16, n.2, pp. 396-406.  Epub June 30, 2022. ISSN 2709-7927.

A 59-year-old male patient with a personal pathological history of smoking, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and morbid obesity. One month before admission he started with dry cough, left flank pain and marked asthenia; it was interpreted as a community inflammatory pneumopathy, which required several antibiotic treatments. There was no improvement and he went to the “Arnaldo Milián Castro” Hospital for study. The transthoracic echocardiogram performed showed a large pericardial effusion and a tumor image in the left atrium which infiltrated the pericardium. The symptoms worsened, he presented arterial hypotension and bradycardia, fell into cardiorespiratory arrest and was declared dead with the diagnoses of cardiac neoplasia and cardiogenic shock. The findings at necropsy allowed the diagnosis of constrictive pericarditis due to infiltration of moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma of the lung with pleural and pericardial carcinomatosis; he died of cardiogenic shock. The most frequent cardiac tumors are those of metastatic origin, including lung and breast carcinomas, melanomas and leukemias.

Keywords : constrictive pericarditis; lung adenocarcinoma.

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