Extensive primary cardiac lymphoma diagnosed by percutaneous endomyocardial biopsy.
Primary cardiac lymphoma (PCL) is an extranodal non-Hodgkin's lymphoma exclusively located in the heart and/or pericardium. It is rare in immunocompetent patients and represents 1.3% of primary cardiac tumors and 0.5% of extranodal lymphomas. The clinical behavior is aggressive and the early symptoms are cardiac failure, syncope, arrhythmia, or pericardial effusion. Although echocardiography, computed tomography (CT) scan, magnetic resonance image (MRI) are the mainly used imaging techniques to detect cardiac tumors, pathologic examination is always required to confirm the diagnosis. Diagnosis of PCL is difficult due to non-specific clinical manifestations and requires invasive approach to get histopathologic evidence. While surgery with systemic chemotherapy or in combination with irradiation has been attempted, the only effective treatment is chemotherapy. However, the prognosis remains poor. We report on a 42-year-old woman who is diagnosed histopathologically as PCL by cardiac catheterization assisted percutaneous endomyocardial biopsy and treated successfully by anthracycline based chemotherapy.
Chin
Jung Yeon
JY
Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, St. Mary's Hospital, Seoul, Korea.
Chung
Mi Hyang
MH
Kim
Jin Jin
JJ
Lee
Jae Hak
JH
Kim
Ji Hyun
JH
Maeng
Il Ho
IH
Jung
Soo-Yeon
SY
Hwang
Hui Jeong
HJ
Lee
Jea Beom
JB
Youn
Ho-Joong
HJ