Atrial myxomas: Experiences with 35 patients in Hawaii

The Challenge Presented by Right Atrial Myxoma

“…The age of all reported individuals varied much more extensively: between 1 month and 81 years. Of a population of 644 patients, 64.6% were female and 35.4% male [2,7,8,15,31,32,37,47,52,57,59,65,70,71,73,78,80]. Three studies with a cumulative total of 154 individuals report an overall fraction of familial cardiac myxomas of 4.5% within a range from 0 to 5.7% [8,23,30].…”

“…Myxomas are the most common type of primary cardiac tumor [27], comprising 30-50% in most pathologic series [14,27,33], and increasingly gaining in significance among the elderly [48]. Since transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography techniques have been established as methods of choice [59,83] with sensitivities up to 95% and 100% [80], respectively, atrial myxomas are detected in as many as 1.0-3.0‰ of echocardiographies [58,75]. In large populations of patients undergoing open heart surgery, approximately 7.8‰ exhibited cardiac myxomas [15].…”

Case report. Management of a left atrial mass in an octogenarian

“…Myxomas represent 25% of all cardiac tumours, with 75% originating in the left atrium and 20% in the right atrium, although any cardiac chamber may be involved [1]. Most arise from the atrial septum, near the fossa ovalis.…”

Mixoma atrial esquerdo com acidente vascular cerebral isquêmico em criança

“…Foram sugeridos, como diagnósticos, doenças do colágeno ou de origem auto-imune, como vasculites; porém, a avaliação ecocardiográfica revelou um grande mixoma atrial esquerdo 3 . Um estudo feito na Universidade do Hawaii, em Honolulu, demonstrou que de 35 portadores de mixoma cardíaco, 46% deles apresentavam sintomas cardíacos (insuficiência cardíaca congestiva 26%, palpitações 14% e síncope 6%), enquanto a embolização arterial ocorreu em 11% dos pacientes 4 . Foi relatado o caso de um menino de oito anos de idade com mixoma atrial esquerdo, que apresentou embolização para ambas as mãos e pernas, depois em cérebro com déficits motores generalizados e hemiparesias e, finalmente, em olho esquerdo com oclusão da artéria central da retina, com grave comprometimento visual 5 .…”