[Surgical therapy of uremic pericarditis (author's transl)]

During a five year period (January 1975 - September 1980) 33 patients, in a population of 262 chronic hemodialysis patients, were treated for uremic pericarditis. They all underwent a pericardiostomy either through a lateral (15 cases) or through a subxiphoid approach (18 cases). Immediate clinical relief occurred in all but one patient who showed a progressive cardiac failure even after drainage. Operative mortality was absent and complications were minimal. There were two recurrences of pericardial effusion after an initial lateral approach through thoracotomy. A subsequent partial pericardectomy was successful in both cases.