EchoBridge Pearl #21: Tamponade Physiology in Cardiac Arrest

In patients with spontaneous circulation, systolic right atrial and diastolic right ventricular collapse are important echocardiographic signs of cardiac tamponade. During cardiac arrest, however, the absence of normal forward flow and intracardiac pressures makes these findings much less reliable.

As a result, the presence or absence of right-sided chamber collapse should not be used in isolation to determine whether a pericardial effusion is responsible for the patient's cardiac arrest.

📖 Gottlieb M, Alerhand S. Managing Cardiac Arrest Using Ultrasound. Ann Emerg Med. 2023.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36334956/

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