RT Book, Section
A1 Shiber, Joseph R.
A2 Farcy, David A.
A2 Chiu, William C.
A2 Marshall, John P.
A2 Osborn, Tiffany M.
SR Print(0)
ID 1135701154
T1 Pericardial Diseases
T2 Critical Care Emergency Medicine, 2e
YR 2016
FD 2016
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9780071838764
LK accessemergencymedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1135701154
RD 2024/04/20
AB In  the  16th  century,  Vesalius  first  described  the  anatomy  of  the  pericardium.  In  1674,  John  Mayow  gave  the  earliest  account  of  constrictive  pericarditis:  “the  heart  was  nearly  covered  by  cartilage,  adherent  to  its  interior  so  that  blood  could  scarcely  enter.”  Richard  Lower  accurately  described  tamponade  in  1689:  “a  profuse  effusion  oppresses  and  inundates  the  heart.  The  walls  of  the  heart  are  so  compressed  by  the  fluid  circling  everywhere,  so  that  the  heart  cannot  dilate  sufficiently  to  receive  the  blood,  then  the  pulse  becomes  exceedingly  small,  thence  succeed  syncope  and  death  itself.”1  Franz  Schuh  did  the  first  successful  pericardiocentesis  in  1840;  Churchill  performed  the  first  pericardiectomy  in  the  United  States  in  1929.  Claude  Beck  described  his  triad  of  findings  in  tamponade  in  1935.  In  1954,  Edler  demonstrated  a  pericardial  effusion  by  ultrasound,  and  in  1971  Spodick  described  the  EKG  findings  associated  with  pericarditis.1,2