Pericardial Fat Necrosis

Abstract

THE occurrence in a previously healthy person of sudden severe chest pain or a suspicious shadow on a film of the chest raises serious diagnostic considerations such as myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism or lung cancer. Before therapy is instituted it is worthwhile to consider, at least, some of the alternative diagnoses of less ominous consequence. Among these is pericardial fat necrosis. This clinical entity is sufficiently rare that we have been able to find only seven reported cases before the one that forms the body of this report. In none of them was the correct diagnosis made before operation, and . . .