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A heart within the heart--a rare congenital cause of an embolic stroke

Tina Khan1, Samy El-Sharkawy, Frank Schafer

  • 1Cardiology Department, Harefield Hospital, London, UK. tinakhaled@hotmail.com

BMJ Case Reports
|July 5, 2012
PubMed

The authors report the case of an 87-year-old lady who presented with a right middle cerebral artery territory infarct in whom the authors diagnosed a probable ruptured blood cyst attached to her anterior mitral valve leaflet, with the use of trans-thoracic and trans-oesophageal echocardiography. Embolic strokes are recognised as a rare complication of intracardiac blood cysts, with very few cases previously reported. Echocardiography was first used to identify a blood cyst in 1983 and remains an excellent modality to diagnose this rare condition.

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