Pericardial Involvement in CKD Patients

Abstract

Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease may present all typical pericardial clinical entities but some of them are surely more common than others. Last decades have witnessed to a dramatic improvement in caring patients with kidney failure and uremic pericarditis (as seen in the past) is quite rare to observe. Pericardial effusion (idiopathic or secondary) is more frequent, especially in hemodialysis patients and in those patients who start renal replacement therapy in critical care conditions (i.e. patients with chronic and or acute heart failure). In CKD patients following clinical conditions can be present: pericardial effusion (idiopathic or secondary), acute pericarditis, constrictive pericarditis. Pericardial effusion can be classified as mild, moderate or severe; acute pericarditis could be idiopathic or secondary to wide spectrum of infectious, immunologic or neoplastic diseases.

Constrictive pericarditis can represent final pathway of many secondary conditions leading to pericardic and myocardic fibrosis.