Moustafa, Abdelmoniem; Liu, Xinlu; Ye, Feng; Khuder, Sadik; Alhazmi, Luai; Youssef, Eslam; Alim, Hussam; Alsamman, Mohd A; Khan, Mohammad S; Eltahawy, Ehab
description
Pericardial effusion is not an uncommon finding in hospitalized patients. Many pericardial effusions are found incidentally through computed tomography (CT) performed for other indications. Echocardiography is usually ordered when an incidentally discovered pericardial effusion is found on the CT to examine the effect of the effusion on hemodynamics and to detect early signs of tamponade. However, in clinical practice, the discrepancy between CT and echocardiography regarding the size of pericardial effusions is common. The accuracy of CT in the evaluation of the size of pericardial effusions is not well-studied. Our study aims to evaluate the accuracy of CT in assessing the size of a pericardial effusion compared with the gold standard echocardiography.
