Right atrial benign schwannoma

Abstract

Primary schwannoma of the heart is a rare disease. It arises from vagus nerve branches and plexus. Most schwannomas are benign tumors, but sometimes they can be primary malignant neoplasms. In the MedLine database, we found only 21 publications on benign and 13 publications on primary malignant cardiac schwannoma. Moreover, according to localization in the right atrium, only eight benign schwannoma observations are described. We report a 73-year-old woman who, with echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging of the heart, revealed a right atrial tumor with sprouting of the right atrial free wall. The tumor was radically excised through cardiopulmonary bypass and pharmaco-cold cardioplegia. Pathohistological and immunohistochemical examination of the excised tumor showed that it is benign schwannoma.

Keywords

• schwannoma
• cardiac tumor
• malignant neoplasms