Saturday, June 02, 2012

Pneumopericardium

Pneumopericardium
This picture is of a patient with traumatic pneumopericardium after blunt chest trauma.
You can see the air collected in the pericardial sac.


There is so much air that it is actually displacing the heart back toward the back and is compressing the heart.  The patient actually had some low blood pressure as a result of this condition.  We (cardiology) got a catheter placed and it remained in place for over a week until we were sure it would not reaccumulate.

The Image below is a "normal" chest CT for comparison.