Cardiac myxoma imaging features and tissue characteristics at cardiovascular magnetic resonance

Abstract

Although myxoma is extremely rare, it represents the most common primary benign cardiac tumor, accounting for 50% of cases [1]. Echocardiography is the first in line imaging modality but it has a limited tissue characterization ability, hampering to establish the diagnosis of myxoma presenting atypically [2]. Therefore, cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is increasingly used in the diagnostic patient work up. Because of its rarity, our knowledge of the imaging characteristics of myxoma at CMR, is limited to case reports and small patient series. In this study, we report the CMR features of a consecutive patient cohort (n = 35, 17 men, 64 years (26–86 years)) with histologically confirmed myxomas obtained at two tertiary hospitals from 2005 to 2015.