Incidental finding of a giant intracardiac angioma infiltrating both ventricles in a 35-year-old woman: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Primary cardiac tumors are rare and often asymptomatic or present with unspecific symptoms. Benign cardiac tumors of vascular origin are especially rare, with only few existing data in the literature. CASE PRESENTATION: A 35-year-old Caucasian female patient presented to our department with an asymptomatic giant intracardiac angioma infiltrating both ventricles. Evaluation of this tumor involved electrocardiography, echocardiography, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, coronary angiography, an open myocardial biopsy, and histological examination of the resected specimen. Because our patient was asymptomatic, she was managed conservatively with regular follow-up. We discuss the treatment options available in comparison with similar cases. CONCLUSION: Diagnosis and therapy of benign cardiac tumors, especially of asymptomatic lesions, can be a challenge. There is no evidence available to help in the management of such patients. An extensive evaluation is needed with different imaging modalities, and case-specific decisions should be made that involve experts in cardiology, cardio-oncology, and heart surgery.

Preoperative patient preparation: psychological and educational aspects.

Effective preoperative preparation can be a major investment in the determination of positive patient outcomes. Psychological preparation and patient education are important aspects of the patient's surgical experience. The trend toward ambulatory surgery decreases the time nurses spend with preoperative patients and challenges the perioperative nurse to provide effective comprehensive support in a limited amount of time.

Flow-cytometric characterization of cardiac allograft-infiltrating cells following MHC class I antigen pretreatment in the mouse.

Changes in the graft-infiltrating cell population (GIC) induced by Class I MHC pretreatment were characterized using flow cytometric analysis. C3H mice received 10(7) EL4 cells intravenously 14 days prior to transplant with C57BL/10 (H-2b) hearts. Transplanted hearts were removed from six recipients in both groups at 4, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 21 days after transplantation. GICs were harvested and incubated with FITC-conjugated Lyt-1 and Lyt-2 and phycoerythrin-conjugated L3T4 monoclonal antibodies. The proportion of GICs which were Lyt-1, L3T4, or Lyt-2 positive was similar in both control and pretreated groups at all times posttransplant, and all three cell populations exhibited similar changes over the course of the study in both groups. At Post-transplant Day (PTD) 9, there were significantly more double-staining cells (L3T4+, Lyt2+) in the pretreated group than in the control group (8.58 +/- 2.49% vs 4.36 +/- 1.32%, P < 0.05). By PTD 15, the double-staining cells had increased in pretreated mice to 17.46 +/- 4.36% of the total GICs (P < 0.05). The percentage of GICs in EL4-pretreated mice which were Lyt-1- was significantly higher at all time points than the percentage of L3T4- or Lyt-2- cells, whereas in the control, these cell populations were equivalent, implying that in pretreated mice, cells are present which are L3T4+ or Lyt2+ but Lyt-1-.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)