Hypoplastic Left Atrial Appendage: A Case Report and Literature Review

BACKGROUND The left atrial appendage (LAA) has considerable variations in its size, shape, and spatial relationship with other cardiac structures. Absence of the LAA is a congenital cardiac condition usually identified by an imaging modality intended for other purposes. Absence of the LAA has been described in a total of 19 case reports so far; however, no cases of "hypoplastic" LAA in a real sense have ever been reported. CASE REPORT We herein report a case of hypoplastic, but not truly absent, LAA in a 76-year-old man scheduled for catheter ablation against atrial flutter. Preprocedural transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) performed in this patient to exclude intracardiac thrombosis failed to detect the LAA, although Doppler color-flow mapping revealed a jet signal spewed out into the main LA around where the LAA would be located. The LAA was also not detectable by routinely developed tomographic images from computed tomography (CT) angiography. Eventually, however, the multiplanar reconstruction into 3-dimensional volume rendering via the CT angiography identified a very small LAA. Those findings by TEE and CT led to a diagnosis of hypoplastic LAA. CONCLUSIONS Hypoplastic LAA should be kept in mind when considering LAA interventions as well as anticoagulation treatment. Multiple imaging modalities are necessary to recognize morphological aberration of the LAA.