The patient was a 67-year-old woman with a history of worsening dyspnea over several months. Cardiac echocardiography showed a large, mobile left atrial myxoma. Emergency surgery was performed. Cardiac arrest occurred during repositioning of the heart to cannulate the inferior vena cava and transesophageal echocardiography revealed the large myxoma obstructing the left ventricle. Cardiopulmonar...

Nerve sheath myxoma is a rare benign lesion that has a strong predilection to the extremities. In addition to the extremities, nerve sheath myxoma had been reported in scalp, back, the neck, lateral chest wall, mandible and gingiva. Histologically it has a polylobated appearance and pale staining round nests of spindled and stellate cells separated by thin collagenous septa. The tumor cells sho...

Cardiac myxomas are rare. The clinical diagnosis of an atrial myxoma may occur in an asymptomatic patient but may also present with cardiac failure, syncope, arrythmias, or with vascular evidence of tumour embolisation. The delay in diagnosis from presentation is approximately ten months. We present the case of a 53-year-old woman who attended our Emergency Department with dyspnoea, fatigue and...

Atrial myxoma is the most common type of benign primary heart tumours. Most of these tumours are sporadic in origin occurring at 3rd to 6th decade of life, while hereditary forms do exist. They are mostly found in the left atrium followed by right atrium and ventricles. A left atrial myxoma may present with features of mitral valve obstruction, embolic phenomenon or systemic disease. On diagnos...

Calponin is an actin filament-associated protein significantly involved in the regulation of the cellular motility. Some data have indicated that overproduction of calponin in basal cell carcinoma (BCC) of the skin may be responsible for local tumor invasiveness and more aggressive biological behavior. We studied the immunohistochemical expression of calponin in a set of cutaneous BCCs, in orde...

Cardiac myxoma is a benign (non-malignant) neoplasm that represents the most common primary tumour of the heart. We present the case of a 36 year old woman with background hypertension who presented with features of left ventricular failure and seizures, and was found during transthoracic echocardiography to have left atrial myxoma protruding through the mitral valve orifice. She subsequently h...

Cerebral infarctions of cardiac etiology are observed in around 20% of patients with ischemic stroke. Cerebral ischemia is the first clinical manifestation in 1/3 of cases of atrial myxomas. Although almost half of patients with atrial myxoma show changes at neurological exam, non-hemorrhagic cerebral infarction is seen in computed tomography in practically all cases. We present the case of a 4...

Myxomas are benign and the most common tumors of the cardiac muscle (Reynen, 1995). They are predominantly located in the left atrium. Clinical manifestations may vary according to the localization and the size of the myxoma. On the other hand, imaging of a myxoma by contrast dye during coronary angiography is a rare sign, which displays the vascular supply of the tumor. Here, we report the cas...