Abstract
Colchicine is a drug with a very long tradition - it was known to physicians in the Ancient Greece already. For a long time, its antiinflammatory properties have been only used in the treatment of acute attacks of gout and in the prevention of serositis accompanying Familiar Mediterranean Fever or Behçet's disease.
Several randomized trials were performed in the last decade, however, leading to introduction of colchicine treatment even in several forms of pericardial inflammation. Data from COPE and ICAP trials supported the use of colchicine in combination with conventional antiinflammatory therapy as the treatment of first choice in acute idiopathic pericarditis; data from CORE, CORP, and CORP 2 trials have done the same for recurrent pericarditis.
Colchicine therapy can be contemplated in post operation periods as a prevention of postpericardiotomy syndrome (COPPS and COPPS 2 trials) and it can also be used in so called posttraumatic pericarditis. The general recommendation concerning the above pericardial pathologies says that high doses of colchicine used in the past should be avoided and replaced by the lower, chronic doses adjusted to the patient's weight, given for several months depending on the indication.
The new approach has been summarized in the latest (2015) Guidelines of European Society of Cardiology concerning pericardial affections. In the Czech Republic, these recommendations are being reflected by an update to SPC of the relevant preparation Colchicum Dispert.