Primary cardiac tumors: surgical experience and follow-up.
BACKGROUND
Primary cardiac tumors are rare. There are only a few reports of such tumors from India.


RESULTS
We report our experience with 34 patients with primary cardiac tumors operated on at our institute between December 1989 and October 2001. The study group comprised 16 males and 18 females with a mean age of 40.05 +/- 13.06 years (range 7-65 years). The predominant symptoms were breathlessness and congestive heart failure. In addition, 1 patient presented with peripheral embolism with impending limb ischemia that necessitated emergency embolectomy. Echocardiography was confirmatory in the diagnosis of all the benign tumors, whereas the malignant tumors were incidentally found during surgery. All the patients survived the operation. Complete resection of the tumor was possible only in benign tumors; however, malignant tumors were partly removed to relieve obstruction. All the excised benign tumors showed no recurrence on a mean follow-up of 54.78 +/- 31.30 months (range 3-108 months). Myxoma was found in 31 patients, left ventricular fibroma in 1, and leiomyosarcoma in 2. Both the patients with malignant tumors developed recurrence postoperatively, and succumbed to extensive distant metastases.


CONCLUSIONS
The long-term outcome of surgery was excellent in patients with benign cardiac tumors. However, malignant tumors had an unchanged prognosis, although symptomatic relief was achieved.
Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow.
Vijay
V
Agarwal
Surendra Kumar
SK
Agarwal
Ashok Kumar
AK
Srivastava
Shalini
S
Kapoor
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000503:physiopathology; D006338:Heart Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009232:Myxoma / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local; D011379:Prognosis