Cardiac solitary fibrous tumor - an extremely rare but potentially fatal diagnosis

Abstract

The background of this review is a description of the case of a 28-year-old man with an extremely rare cardiac solitary fibrous tumor (SFT). Although this tumor was removed surgically and in the 6-month follow-up examination no relapse was noted, recurrence was observed and confirmed in the magnetic resonance imaging 4 months later. SFT prevalence, symptoms and signs, treatment options and prognosis are reviewed.

Keywords: follow-up; primary cardiac tumors; recurrence; solitary fibrous tumor; surgery.

Figure 1

Cardiac solitary fibrous tumor. At the time of diagnosis, a solid tumor visualized by means of MRI (A) adhered to the inferior caval vein (IVC) and caused massive pericardial effusion (*). The tumor location was confirmed during surgery performed from full median sternotomy (B). Histopathological examination revealed a non-epithelial spindle cell tumor consisting of cells with various degrees of atypia, a high mitotic index and positive immunohistochemical staining for STAT6, vim, Bcl2, CKAE1/AE3 and ERG (D). Unfortunately, 10 months later recurrence of a tumor (TU) infiltrating the left atrium and tissues adjacent to the great vessels was visualized in MRI (C)