Medical Dictionary

Dressler's syndrome

noun Dress·ler's syndrome \ ˈdres-lərz- \

medical Definition of Dressler's syndrome

: pericarditis after heart attack or open-heart surgery that is often recurrent and is typically accompanied by chest pain, fever, malaise, difficulty in breathing, pleurisy, and pericardial and pleural effusions

Biographical Note for dressler's syndrome

Dressler, William (1890–1969), American cardiologist. Born in Poland, Dressler served as associate chief of a hospital devoted to cardiac care in Vienna from 1924 to 1938. In that year he emigrated to the United States, becoming chief of the cardiac clinic at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, the following year. While there, he published Clinical Cardiology (1942) and, with Hugo Roesler, Atlas of Clinical Cardiology (1948). In 1955 he described for the first time recurrent pericarditis following heart attack.