Heart Transplant Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Heart Transplant, including details on risks, prognosis, procedure, surgery, organ donation.

Incidental detection of an asymptomatic papillary fibroelastoma on a control biopsy of a heart transplant recipient.

Val-Bernal JF, Val D, Garijo MF

Department of Anatomical Pathology, Medical Faculty, Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital, University of Cantabria, ES-39008 Santander, Spain. apavbj@humv.es

BACKGROUND: Papillary fibroelastoma (PFE) of the right ventricle is a rare lesion. This tumor has not been described in the heart of a cardiac transplant recipient. METHODS AND RESULTS: We report a 42-year-old woman suffering from chronic ischemic cardiopathy who underwent an orthotopic cardiac transplantation. Five years after surgery, the control two-dimensional echocardiography showed no abnormalities. At this time, the programmed endomyocardial biopsies of the right ventricle included a 2-mm lesion that was diagnosed as PFE. To our knowledge, only a previous case of this tumor has been detected at random in a control cardiac biopsy. Differential diagnosis includes chordae tendinae removed at the time of cardiac sampling, Lambl excrescence, and myxoma. CONCLUSION: PFE can arise in a cardiac transplant recipient and may be detected on a random programmed biopsy.

Published 19 September 2005 in Cardiovasc Pathol, 14(5): 280-2.
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