From March 1986 to March 1991, 29 patients were operated due to cardiac tamponade at the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Masan Koryo General Hospital. Among them, 19cases were traumatic origin and 10 were Non traumatic origin. A] Traumatic cardiac tamponade Out of 19 cases, 12 cases were resulted from penetrating injury and 7 cases from trauma. Average time interval from arrival to operation was 91 minutes[15min.~8.5hr.] in penetrating injury group. On the other hand, average time of in cases of blunt trauma was more than 3hours because of the difficulties in diagnosis. Four deaths occured in 19 cases [mortality rate: 21.1%] 3 in blunt trauma group[42.9%] and 1 in penetrating group[8.3%]. In view of our experience, the prognosis was closely correlated with injury mode, initial vital sign and mental status. There was no close correlation between prognosis and cardiac injury site. B] Non traumatic cardiac tamponade The etiologies were malignancy[4], non-spesific pericarditis[3], tuberculosis[1], pyogenic[1] and cardiomyopathy[1]. All of the cases in which performed tube pericardiostomy were the cases that showed no response to conservative treatment and repeat per-icardiocentesis. There was one posoperative death.