[Atrial septal aneurysm and associated anomalies. Personal experience with 38 cases]

We examined 38 patients discovered to be affected by an atrial septal aneurysm (ASA) during 4014 consecutive echocardiographic examinations on an adult population in an eighteen-month period. ASA is often associated with other abnormalities, mainly mitral valve prolapse (23%), followed by aortic or pulmonary regurgitation, interatrial septal defect, tricuspid valve prolapse. It has been hypothesized that ASA could be a trigger for cardiac arrhythmias or a source of emboli to various districts. However, in our population we were not able to find any patient complaining of significant ASA-related cardiac symptoms nor affected by complications such as cardiac arrhythmias or embolic phenomena. Therefore, in our opinion this entity could be defined as quite benign neither requiring pharmacological therapy nor anticoagulant prophylaxis unless such treatments are indicated by an associated pathology.