Intracardiac mass lesions: experience of 14 cases

Mass lesions within the heart are often encountered during routine echocardiography. The nature of such masses can generally be suspected depending upon clinical setting. During 13 years of our experience in echo lab, we came across 14 patients with large intracardiac masses (some of them, rare type). Clinical features, echocardiographic findings and histopathological confirmation which was possible in majority of them, are described. Five of our patients had cardiac tumour (myxoma), four had large intracavitary thrombus, while pieces from two patients were demonstrated to have large vegetations and hydatid cyst(s). One patient, suspected to have vegetation on mitral valve, turned out to have thick myxomatous tissue deposits on histopathology. Two-dimensional echocardiographic features of intracardiac mass lesion are generally dependable in deciding nature of such lesions. However, very large thrombus and vegetation mimicking cardiac tumour are rarely encountered.