[Cardiac manifestations of atrophying polychondritis. Apropos of a case disclosed by pericardial effusion and auricular flutter].
We report the case of a 50 year old patient, hospitalised with a clinical record suggestive of acute pericarditis and disturbance of auricular rhythm of the flutter type. The consciousness of muscular pain, subcutaneous peri-articular nodules developing over periods of 10 to 15 days and the appearance of chondritis of the right auricle on the 2nd day of hospitalisation led to a diagnosis of atrophying polychondritis. A two-dimensional, TM echocardiographic examination confirms the presence of a discrete, pericardial effusion and presents evidence for a concentric hypertrophy and a heterogeneous aspect of the left ventricular myocardium. In atrophying polychondritis, a rare systemic disease the diagnosis for which is essentially clinical, complications readily set in the form of cardiovascular attacks, sometimes lethal (valvulopathies essentially aortic, aneurysm of the ascending aorta, disturbances of rhythm and conduction, myocardial necrosis, etc). A pericardial attack has already been reported for this condition but uniquely according to electrocardiographic criteria, the lack of specificity of which is known. Our case report confirms the possibility of a pericardial reaction and, in addition, permits the observation of a hypertrophy and a heterogeneous aspect of the myocardium which has not yet been reported in the literature.