ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To analyze clinical and histologic findings of 50 patients with primary neoplams of the heart in a tertiary referral center. METHODS: From 1980 to 1998, we retrospectively analyzed 50 patients, 32 of whom were females, whose ages ranged from 9 to 73 years (mean age = 44.16 + or -18 years). RESULTS: Most tumors were located in the left side of the heart (72 percent), myxoma being the most common (84 percent) histologic type. The other histologic types found were as follows: fibroma (4 percent), lipoma (2 percent), rhabdomyosarcoma (2 percent), hemangioma (2 percent), sarcoma (2 percent), angiosarcoma (2 percent), and lymphoma (2 percent). Diagnosis was established by echocardiography in 94 percent of the cases. Clinical findings were as follows: dyspnea (36 percent), weight loss (20 percent), palpitations (18 percent), chest pain (16 percent), fever (8 percent), and arthralgia (6 percent). All patients with thromboembolic phenomena (10 percent) had left atrial myxoma. Approximately 20 percent of the patients were asymptomatic at the initial clinical assessment. CONCLUSION: Primary cardiac tumors are a rare entity with diverse clinical and histologic findings, requiring, therefore, a high level of clinical suspicion