CASE REPORT   

Il Giornale Italiano di Radiologia Medica 2018 Luglio-Agosto;5(4):574-7

DOI: 10.23736/S2283-8376.18.00082-7

Copyright © 2018 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: Italian

The role of MRI in the characterization and surgical planning of right ventricular myxoma

Cecilia ABATE ¹ ✉, Nicola SFORZA ², Cesare AMICO ³, Annalisa SIMEONE ², Giuseppe GUGLIELMI ^{1, 2}

¹ Dipartimento di Radiologia, Università degli Studi di Foggia, Foggia, Italia; ² Dipartmento di Radiologia, IRCCS Ospedale “Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza”, San Giovanni Rotondo, Foggia, Italia; ³ Dipartmento di Cardiologia, IRCCS Ospedale “Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza”, San Giovanni Rotondo, Foggia, Italia

In recent decades, the continuous technological evolution of the non-invasive cardiac imaging methods has made it easier to visualize the cardiac masses, significantly increasing the number of lesions to be characterized and the need for adequate therapeutic choices. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) proved to be essential for diagnosis in most of cases. Cardiac masses are a rare finding in the general population and present non-negligible difficulties in differential diagnosis. Primitive cardiac tumors belong to the intracardiac masses; among these, myxoma is the one most frequently tumor with a prevalence, in the adult population, ranging between 0.001% and 0.5%. However, they do not represent easy diagnosis for cardiac imaging, since it is necessary to differentiate them from secondary cardiac lesions, which are 20 to 40 times more common. Furthermore, in the differential diagnosis, also non-neoplastic lesions, such as the much more frequent thrombocytes, must be taken into consideration. We present the case of a patient with worsening dyspnea and ultrasound finding of right intracardiac mass.

KEY WORDS: Atrial mass - Cardiac imaging techniques - Myxoma