Echocardiographic abnormalities in tuberculous pericardial effusion

Double blind randomised placebo controlled trial of adjunctive prednisolone in the treatment of effusive tuberculous pericarditis in HIV seropositive patients

“…Diagnostic and/or therapeutic pericardiocentesis was undertaken in all patients. The typical two dimensional (cross sectional) echocardiography appearance of tuberculous pericarditis was a thickened pericardium with layers of shaggy echoes lining both visceral and parietal pericardium as previously described,21 but various appearances were observed. Clinical examination and appropriate tests excluded alternative causes of pericarditis.…”

Initial echocardiographic characteristics of pericardial effusion determine the pericardial complications

“…Although hemodynamic significance of initial PE and performing pericardiocentesis or pericardial window operation were also risks of developing pericardial complications, echogenic PE was the most powerful predictor of the pericardial events. Consistent with previous reports [2,3,21], tuberculous PE showed the highest proportion of the echogenic PE than other etiologies in this study, which may explain why the incidence of constrictive pericarditis has been reported high in tuberculous PE [16]. More importantly, we also found that the echogenic PE was the major predictor of pericardial complications irrespective of PE etiologies by multiple logistic regression analysis.…”

“…Exudative frond-like coating and fibrinous strands in PE on 2-dimensional echocardiography have been described as specific findings of tuberculous PE [2,3,21]. However, these echocardiographic features are also found in malignant PE or bacterial PE [2,4].…”

Echocardiography in differentiating tuberculous from chronic idiopathic pericardial effusion

“…2 3 The first report of intrapericardial abnormalities associated with tuberculous pericardial effusion was probably by Chia and colleagues who described linear frond-like echo dense structures protruding into the pericardial cavity forming a dense mass as a result of fibrinous pericarditis. 4 Liu and colleagues demonstrated that thickened pericardium and fibrin strands were highly specific (94% and 88%, respectively), and exudative coating had a high sensitivity (100%), but low specificity (22%), in the diagnosis of tuberculous pericarditis. Their series had only one patient of chronic idiopathic pericardial effusion.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5] The aim of this study was to evaluate the echocardiographic features of tuberculous pericardial effusion and assess the diagnostic and prognostic usefulness of echocardiographic intrapericardial abnormalities in distinguishing between patients with tuberculous pericardial effusion and idiopathic/viral pericardial effusion, which has not been previously studied.…”