Abstract

INDUNI, Eduardo; PUCC, Juan  and  SOTO, Longino. Tumores intracardíacos: aspectos generales y experiencia quirúrgica en el Hospital México. Rev. costarric. cardiol [online]. 2002, vol.4, n.1, pp.7-11. ISSN 1409-4142.

Background: Our goal was to determine the frecuency of intracardiac tumors including its hystopatological type, symptoms and postoperative outcome.   Methods:   From 5000 cardiac operations with extracorporeal circulation performed in our hospital, from January 1979 to january 2001, we found 19 patients with cardiac tumors in which 20 resections of the lesion were done. 12 were males (63%) and 7 females (37%). The mean age was 42 years ( range from 16 to 85 years ).  Seventeen of the lesions were left atrial myxomas (89%), one a bronchogenic cyst , and one was a rabdomyosarcoma of the interatrial septum  that  required extensive resection and  patch repairement.   The mean time duration of the symptoms was 2,8 months and dyspnea was present in all cases, thoracic pain in 16.5% and Cerebrovascular accident in 5,5%.  One diabetic patient died postoperatively due to sepsis and multisystemic failure, the 18 remaining patients had an uneventfull outcome.   All cases had preoperative ecocardiographic  diagnosis and all had postoperative ecocardiographic control ( from 6 months to 17 years later ). Only one patient had a recurrence of a myxoma 6 years later and was reoperated.   The case with the sarcoma died 6 months later with multiple metastasis.   Conclusions:  Primary tumors of the heart are very infrecuent (0.4% of all cardiac surgeries performed in our hospital ). Their symptoms are basically dyspnea or systemic embolism. They can be surgically treated with very good results in most of the cases.

Keywords : cardiac tumors; myxomas; cardiovascular surgery.