Pericarditis through the prism of military medicine. Lecture for practicing physicians

The pericardium as a structure of the heart and pericarditis as a disease began to be mentioned at the dawn of our era in close association with military medicine. The upsurge of pathology in modern times, associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, was also first noted in a military hospital. Today and in the years to come, the relevance of the topic of pericarditis will inevitably surface in the differential diagnosis of chest pain in patients with chest wounds and contusions, as well as in military personnel who have repeatedly carried acute respiratory viral infections on their feet or who have panic attacks. In 10 years since the release of the latest European guidelines for the management of pericarditis, there have been significant changes in the ideas about pathogenesis, and new possibilities for diagnosis and therapy of the disease have emerged. The lecture contains data that provide the most adequate knowledge about pericarditis with comments from the authors on the subtle points and persistent problems in the management of these patients.

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