A Tight Squeeze - Cardiac Tamponade in a Scleroderma Patient.

Authors

Ifrah Nadeem, Charles E Geringer

Published in

Journal of community hospital internal medicine perspectives. Volume 16. Issue 4. Pages 100-104. Epub Jul 17, 2026.

Abstract

Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune connective tissue disease marked by multiorgan fibrosis, including cutaneous involvement, and vasculopathy. Primary heart involvement in systemic sclerosis (SSc-pHI) includes heart failure, arrhythmia, pericarditis, pericardial effusion, valve disorders, and myocarditis. SSc-pHI remains a leading cause of mortality in this population. Pericardial effusion in SSc is usually associated with heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, and end-stage kidney disease. Cardiac tamponade is a rare initial presentation of SSc-pHI but carries a worse prognosis. Diagnosis is often challenging due to subclinical manifestations and requires advanced imaging modalities such as transthoracic echocardiography with tissue doppler and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Further research is necessary to elucidate pathogenic mechanisms and identify biomarkers essential for targeted therapy and improved clinical recommendations for this subgroup. This report presents a patient with SSc who presented with cardiac tamponade leading to cardiac arrest.

PMID:
42631051
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 17 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.