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Left Atrial Appendage Lipoma: An Unusual Location of Cardiac Lipomas
Author(s) -
Khoueiry Georges,
Abi Rafeh Nidal,
Waked Alain,
Abdo Abir,
Azab Basem,
Asgarian Kourosh T.,
Snyder S. Thomas
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
echocardiography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1540-8175
pISSN - 0742-2822
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-8175.2010.01334.x
Subject(s) - medicine , endocardium , lipoma , asymptomatic , appendage , cardiology , thrombus , atrial appendage , artery , radiology , atrial fibrillation , anatomy , sinus rhythm
Cardiac lipomas are benign neoplasms of the heart and accounts for 8.4% of all primary tumors. They can occur sporadically at any age with no sex preference. The tumor originates mostly in the subendocardium and subepicardium but very rarely within the myocardium. Clinically this tumor is asymptomatic and found incidentally in the vast majority of cases. On occasion large lesions can lead to mechanical obstruction and pericardial effusions if located in the epicardium. Although lipomas can occur at different atrial or ventricular locations, it was never reported at the level of the left atrial appendage (LAA). Usually a mass in the LAA represents a thrombus, however there are few case reports of LAA tumors mainly representing fibroelastomas, myxomas, hemangiomas, and malignant tumors. To our knowledge there are no reported cases of left atrial appendage lipomas (LAAL) in the medical literature. We report the first case of LAAL discovered incidentally on transesophageal echocardiogram during off pump coronary artery bypass grafting. (Echocardiography 2011;28:E91‐E93)