Left atrial myxoma who presented cardiac arrest immediately after the onset of coldness of a leg; report of a case
Tano, K.; Ichikawa, Y.
Kyobu Geka. Japanese Journal of Thoracic Surgery 65(11): 1013-1015
2012
ISSN/ISBN: 0021-5252 PMID: 23023550 Document Number: 656444
A 55-year-old woman visited the emergency department of our hospital with complaint of coldness and pain in her right leg. Two hours after the onset, she suddenly felt dyspnea and temporarily suffered cardiac arrest. Echocardiography revealed a left atrial tumor prolapsing into the left ventricle through the mitral valve. By emergency operation, both the cardiac tumor and the embolus were diagnosed as myxomas. The postoperative course was uneventful. Cardiac failure and arterial embolism are major symptoms of a left atrial myxoma, but there have been no reports of both symptoms occurring at the same time. It is supposed that the changing form of the tumor because of embolus separation could have caused heart failure. We must consider the use of echocardiography to examine cardiac tumors in patients with arterial embolism who do not have cardiac arrhythmias.