Introduction:
The World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. With its rapid spread across the globe, physicians have encountered a broad spectrum of early and late complications - mostly resulting from the underlying inflammatory process - including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), acute kidney injury (AKI), and secondary infection.
Mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients has been reported to be as high as 17%, with the figure being 20.5% in patients undergoing elective surgeries.
There is paucity of data regarding the cardiovascular effects of COVID-19. Arrhythmias, myocarditis, hypercoagulability, congestive heart failure, and, surprisingly, two cases of cardiac tamponade physiology, both resulting from hemorrhagic pericardial effusion, have been reported. We further report three cases of COVID-19 complicated by cardiac tamponade requiring emergent surgical intervention.