Abstract
This report describes a 26-year-old patient with hemangiosarcoma of the heart and summarizes the clinicopathological features in previous reports of patients with cardiac angiosarcoma. The patient was admitted to our hospital because of a syncope and one episode of nocturnal dyspnea and hemoptysis. In his history he complained of progressive weakness and loss of weight over the past 2 months. Echocardiography and computed tomography of the chest showed inhomogeneous masses in the pericardial cavity completely surrounding the heart and involving the ascending aorta and the superior vena cava. Histological examination of the tissue obtained from the mass by fine needle technique revealed a poorly differentiated malignant tumor of mesenchymal origin. Exploratory thoracotomy followed by tumor biopsies showed an inoperable cardiac hemangiosarcoma of enormous size with multiple metastases in both lungs. Palliative tumor resection was not performed. During the postoperative course the patient still required controlled ventilation. After 3 days of cytostatic chemotherapy no regression of tumor mass was seen by chest radiography. Cardiorespiratory insufficiency was progressive, and the patient died within 3 weeks after admission.
References
Baumgart P, Engberding R, Fiedler V, Müller US, Spieker C, Vetter H (1986) Hämangiosarkom des Herzens. Klin Wochenschr 64:1134–1138
Burke AP, Cowan D, Virmani R (1992) Primary sarcomas of the heart. Cancer 69:387–395
Bland KI, McCoy DM, Kinard RE, Copeland EM (1987) Application of magnetic resonance imaging and computerized tomography as an adjunct to the surgical management of soft tissue sarcomas. Ann Surg 205:473–478
Engberding R, Schulze-Waltrup N, Große-Heitmeyer W, Stoll V (1987) Transthorakale und transösophageale 2-D-Echokardiographie in der Diagnostik peri- und parakardialer Tumoren. Dtsch Med Wochenschr 112:49–52
Glancy DL, Morales JB, Roberts WC (1968) Angiosarcoma of the heart. Am J Cardiol 21:413–419
Hake U, Iversen S, Schmid F-X, Erbel R, Oelert H (1989) Urgent indications for surgery in primary and secondary cardiac neoplasm. Scand J Thor Cardiovasc 23:111–114
Janigan DT, Husain A, Robinson NA (1986) Cardiac angiosarcomas. Cancer 57:852–859
Lantz DA, Dougherty TH, Lucca MJ (1989) Primary angiosarcoma of the heart causing cardiac rupture. Am Heart J 113:186–188
Lobo AJ, Butland RJ, Stewart S, Shneerson JM (1989) Primary cardiac angiosarcoma causing rupture of the heart and spontaneous bilateral pneumothorax. Thorax 44:78–79
Satou Y, Nakagawa Y, Miki H, Suzuki H, Takahashi M (1991) Cardiac angiosarcoma with ruptured right atrium diagnosed by echocardiography. Chest 100:274–275
Silverman NA (1980) Primary cardiac tumors. Ann Surg 191:127–138
Strohl KP (1976) Angiosarcoma of the heart. Arch Intern Med 136:928–932
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Herr, W., Schwarting, A., Wittig, B. et al. Enormous hemangiosarcoma of the heart. Clin Investig 72, 372–376 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00252830
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00252830