Primary cardiac myxomas: clinical experience and surgical results in 67 patients

Primary cardiac tumors are rarely seen and have an incidence of 0.3% of all open-cardiac operations. Among those, myxoma is the most common cardiac tumor. There are only a few reports of such tumors from Turkey.

We report our experience with 67 patients with primary cardiac myxoma operated on at our institute between December 1990 and October 2006. The study group comprised 22.38% males and 77.61% females with a mean age of 46.29 (+/-18.29) years. The predominant symptoms were dyspnea and palpitation. In addition, 3 patients presented with peripheral embolism with impending limb ischemia that necessitated emergency embolectomy. Echocardiography was generally enough for the demonstration of the myxomas. Two sporadic myxomas (%2.98) and one familial myxomas (1.49%) presented with recurrence. There were three (4.47%) hospital mortalities. Two patients (2.27%), with preoperative decompensation, died after tumor resection, from progressive low cardiac output. One patient, with preoperative massive pulmonary embolus, died two days after operation, from right ventricle insufficient.

In conclusion, we herein summarized surgical results with primary cardiac myxomas. Surgical excision of primary cardiac myxomas tends to show excellent results after surgical excision.