Pericarditis - an acute or chronic inflammation of a pericardiac bag. Distinguish fibrinous, serous fibrinous, hemorrhagic, xanthomatous, purulent, putrefactive pericardites. An etiology: an infection (viruses, bacteria, mushrooms, the elementary), a myocardial infarction, general diseases of a connecting tissue (rheumatic disease, a pseudorheumatism, a systemic lupus erythematosus), a uremia, a trauma, including operational, an ionizing radiation, metastasizing tumours (a cancer of a lung, a mammary gland, etc.) and hemoblastoses, parasitogenic invasions; for some pericardites of the reason of their occurrence are not established (idiopathic).

The pathogenesis - often allergic or autoimmune, at an infectious pericarditis an infection can be a releaser; direct damage of environments of heart bacteriemic or other agents is not excluded also. Signs, current are defined by a basic disease and character of an exudate, its quantity and rate of accumulation. Initial signs: a malaise, a fervescence, stethalgias. For a pain at a pericarditis gradual increase is characteristic, but at height of process (at occurrence of an exsudate) the pain can decrease or disappear; it is bound to respiration and depends on position of a body (usually decreases in position sitting with an inclination forward). The pain has cutting or pricking character is more often, is localized behind a breast bone, can irradiate in a neck, a back, shoulders, epigastric area, some days last, as a rule. Communication of a painful syndrome with respiration and position of a body is characteristic. The pericardial rub of various intensity and prevalence is often auscultated. Accumulation of an exsudate is accompanied by disappearance of stethalgias and a pericardial rub, occurrence of a dyspnea, a cyanosis, a swelling of cervical veins, weakening of an intimate jerk, expansion of intimate dullness, however at the moderate quantity of an exudate the heart failure is usually expressed moderately. Owing to depression of diastolic filling the stroke output of heart decreases, cardiac sounds become deaf persons, pulse small and frequent, quite often paradoxical (falling of filling and a strain of pulse during an inspiration).