Salmonella pericarditis with tamponade in systemic lupus erythematosus.

Despite the high frequency of both pericardial involvement and of infectious complications in SLE, septic pericarditis is uncommon. We report here a patient with SLE who developed tamponade due to Salmonella infection. Most of the other eight recorded cases of septic pericarditis in SLE were due to Staphylococcus aureus and none has been previously attributed to Gram-negative bacteria.