Case Presentation:   A 29-year-old African-American female presented with two weeks of left neck swelling and fever. Over four months, she had noted fatigue, cough, night sweats, and an unintentional 12-pound weight loss. Two empiric courses of antibiotics effected no clinical change. She had no toxic habits and was sexually active with one male partner. [...]

Cardiac involvement in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is very common. Despite the relative frequency of pericarditis and pericardial effusions which occur in more than 50% of SLE patients, cardiac tamponade is rare and is seen in less than 3%. Additionally, there have been no consistent reliable predictors of tamponade development in such patients. We report [...]

Case Presentation: A 43 year old male with a past medical history of stage 4 chronic kidney disease, hypertension treated with Minoxidil, former smoker, was initially diagnosed 9 years prior with presumed viral small pericardial effusion that remained stable on follow-up with serial echocardiograms. He presented with dyspnea and chest tightness with exertion, orthopnea, paroxysmal [...]

Case Presentation: A 46-year-old male without significant past medical history presented with progressive dyspnea, syncope, and epigastric pain. An electrocardiogram displayed sinus tachycardia without signs of ischemia. A chest radiograph demonstrated a widened mediastinum. A subsequent transthoracic echocardiogram demonstrated pericardial effusion and tamponade. Patient had hypotension that was unresponsive to repeated intravenous fluid boluses, prompting [...]

Case Presentation: An otherwise healthy 69-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital with a 3-month history of progressive dyspnea on exertion and anasarca following out-patient transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) demonstrating a large pericardial effusion and early signs of cardiac tamponade based on exaggerated mitral inflow velocity with respiration. Physical exam revealed jugular venous distension and a [...]

Case Presentation: A 22-year-old male with history of syringomyelia and Chiari malformation status post repair presented as a transfer for a 1-week history of fever, progressive dyspnea, reduced appetite, and headache. On his initial presentation, he was found to be hypoxic after which a chest radiography showed an enlarged cardiac silhouette. Lab work showed new [...]

Case Presentation: A 65-year-old female with a history significant for persistent atrial fibrillation, on apixaban, aortic and mitral bioprosthetic valve replacement, dual-chamber permanent pacemaker (PPM) implantation for heart block 2 weeks prior presented with worsening shortness of breath, dry cough, and generalized weakness for 4 days. Initially, she was found to be hemodynamically stable. Labs [...]

Case Presentation: A 19 y/o woman presents with dyspnea and chest pain that began one week ago. Dyspnea is worse on exertion. She also complains of substernal chest pain, worse upon breathing. Associated symptoms are subjective fevers, dizziness, sore throat, productive cough of green sputum and myalgias. Denies nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, rashes, exposure to [...]

Case Presentation: This is the case of a 57-year-old lady with rapidly progressive stage IV pulmonary adenocarcinoma who presented two months after diagnosis with findings of significant hyponatremia. Upon admission, she was afebrile, hypotensive and tachycardic. Sodium was 119 mEq/L, potassium 2.4 mEq/L, chloride 67 mEq/L, serum osmolality 246 mosm/kg, urine osmolality 684 mosm/kg and [...]

Case Presentation: A 47-year-old man with a history of metastatic colon cancer status post resection and rheumatoid arthritis presented to the emergency department with 4 days of fever, shortness of breath, fatigue and myalgias. He described fevers in a periodic pattern with spikes occurring about 3 times per day. He was found to be tachycardic [...]