Primary cardiac malignant lymphoma: a case report and literature review

Primary cardiac lymphoma (PCL) is a rare hematological malignancy with involvement of the heart and/ or pericardium. It belongs to the extra-nodal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). The most common histological type is diffuse large B cell lymphoma. It generally carries a poor prognosis due either to a delay in the diagnosis or to infiltration of heart structures. Here, we described a 68-year-old male patient who was diagnosed with PCL and accompanied with severe wound infection. The patient receives PR after 6 cycles of R-CHOP regimen, and the wound infection was healing after treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics. We summarize the literatures, and briefly describe the manifestations, diagnosis, treatments and prognosis of PCL. Echocardiography, CT, MRI and PET-CT are used to evaluate the tumor, and our case is the very first case-report of primary cardiac lymphoma with PET-CT scan evaluation before and after chemotherapy. PCL is a rare disease, which be diagnosed and treated in time may improve its prognosis, however, its biological and clinical characteristics are still unknown. The goals of this article are to raise awareness of this disease, show the difficulties of diagnosing and also put emphasizes on the role of chemotherapy in its treatment, so that PCL can be diagnosed and treated in time.