title: Cross-sectional echocardiographic diagnosis of large left atrial tumor and extracardiac tumor compressing the left atrium. Limitation of M mode echocardiography in distinguishing the two lesions.
abstract: A case of a left atrial fibrosarcoma arising from the posterior left atrial wall and two cases of an extracardiac tumor compressing the left atrium were studied with M mode and cross-sectional echocardiography. In all three cases, M mode echocardiography revealed a mass of echoes just behind the aorta and did not distinguish a left atrial from an extracardiac tumor. By contrast, cross-sectional echocardiography allowed direct visualization of the location, size and movement of the tumor in all three cases and contributed to distinguishing the two lesions. This study indicates that cross-sectional echocardiography is more accurate than M mode echocardiography in the differential diagnosis of a large left atrial tumor and extracardiac tumor compressing the left atrium.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004452:Echocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D004938:Esophageal Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005354:Fibrosarcoma / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006338:Heart Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008479:Mediastinal Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged