DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics14080818 ISSN: 2075-4418

Blood or Fat? Differentiating Hemopericardium versus Epicardial Fat Using Focused Cardiac Ultrasound

Yuriy S. Bronshteyn, Nazish Hashmi, Jamie R. Privratsky, Atilio Barbeito
  • Clinical Biochemistry

Basic point-of-care ultrasound of the heart—also known as Focused Cardiac Ultrasound (FoCUS)—has emerged as a powerful bedside tool to narrow the differential diagnosis of causes of hypotension. The list of causes of hypotension that a FoCUS provider is expected to be able to recognize includes a compressive pericardial effusion due to hemopericardium (blood in the pericardial sac). But hemopericardium can be difficult to distinguish from a more common condition that is not immediately life-threatening: epicardial fat. This paper reviews illustrative images of both epicardial fat and hemopericardium to provide practice guidance to the FoCUS user on how to differentiate these two phenomena.

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