Primary cardiac sarcoma

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Primary cardiac sarcoma in pregnancy: a case report.” (J Korean Med Sci. 2006 Oct;21(5):940-3). Authors are Cho GJ, Kim HJ and Kang JS, from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, Korea. Primary cardiac sarcoma is a rare disease in adults. It is also associated with poor prognoses, due to diagnostic delay, therapeutic difficulty, and high metastatic potential. The coincidence of pregnancy and a primary cardiac intimal sarcoma is extremely rare. The authors report a pregnant woman at 27(+5) weeks gestation who was admitted to the hospital with acute-onset dyspnea. A mass was found on the left atrium by transthoracic echocardiography. The patient was diagnosed with a undifferentiated sarcoma, and gave birth to a 1,230 g living baby boy by Caesarean section from preterm contraction at 29(+5) weeks gestation. The patient then received systemic chemotherapy. Palliative cardiac surgery allows the prolonging of pregnancy, until an acceptable fetal viability level is reached. To access the full abstract of the article, click here.