ABSTRACT

Pneumopericardium is the presence of air inside the pericardial cavity, a rare entity which has multifactorial etiology. It is diagnosed through imaging studies. It’s usually a self-limited disease but potentially mortal if it evolves to a cardiac tamponade condition. Even though there are only a few reported cases in scientific literature and only one of which are post traumatic; we believe that there’s an underdiagnosis of the Macklin effect a cause of pneumopericardium without pneumomediastinum, and that it could also be present in spontaneous cases. We describe a posttraumatic tension pneumopericardium case as a result of the Macklin effect, treated successfully with thoracoscopy.

KEYWORDS

Macklin effect, pneumopericardium, cardiac taponade, thoracoscopy, blunt chest trauma.

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