Cardiac tamponade as first manifestation of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in a patient with echographic evidence of mediastinal lymph nodal enlargement

Leukemic pericardial effusion causing cardiac tamponade

“…The latter course was adopted after the deaths of our patients with AML who had undergone pericardiocentesis for tamponade. Young subjects having M5/M4 subtype of AML appear to be particularly high risk cases for mortality following pericardiocentesis as evidenced by our experience and that of others [16,18]. The better result after immediate chemotherapy could re¯ect the experience gained with time in our understanding of acute leukemia and the management of complications in an intensive care set up.…”

“…It is of interest, however, that all reported cases of pericardial effusion with cardiac tamponade in patients with acute leukemia were part of the initial presentation [8±18]. Absence of blasts in the peripheral smear examination is perhaps even rarer and more vexing since it hinders a prompt diagnosis and management [15,16]. We encountered one such patient; however, a therapeutic pericardiocentesis proved to be diagnostic with plenty of blasts detected on examination of the pericardial¯uid.…”

Successful Pericardiocentesis for Cardiac Tamponade in a Patient with Thrombocytopenic Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia

“…These case presentations were reported in patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) (1,2) and acute lymphatic leukemia (ALL) (3)(4)(5)(6)(7). We present a case of cardiac tamponade in a patient with ALL.…”

Cardiac tamponade complicating hyperleukocytosis in a child with leukemia

“…Reviewing the literature we found 18 children and adolescents (including ours) with leukemia that had manifestations of pericarditis with cardiac tamponade (Table I). Ten had acute lymphoblastic leukemia and eight acute nonlymphoblastic leukemia [6,10,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”