Cardiac tamponade and death from intrapericardial rupture of sinus of Valsalva aneurysm

A 35-year-old woman presented with dyspnea and chest pain. She had a large aneurysm of the non-coronary sinus of Valsalva. Before her scheduled urgent surgery, the patient collapsed and died of cardiac tamponade secondary to intrapericardial rupture of the aneurysm. We would advocate urgent repair o f this type of lesion to prevent such an outcome. We are aware of no other specificpublished reports addressing extracardiac rupture of non-coronary c uspthis type of aneurysms. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserv ed.