Cardionerds: A Cardiology Podcast

275. Case Report: A Rare Cause Of Fatigue, Dyspnea, And Weight Loss In An Elderly Man – Brigham and Women’s Hospital

03.20.2023 - By CardioNerdsPlay

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CardioNerds (Amit and Dan) join Dr. Khaled Abdelrahman, Dr. Gurleen Kaur, and Dr. Danny Pipilas from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Residency Program for Italian food and cannolis at the North End in Boston as they discuss the case of an elderly man with primary cardiac lymphoma. They review an approach to intracardiac masses, discuss advantages and disadvantages of various imaging modalities for the evaluation of intracardiac masses, and also delve into anthracycline toxicity. The E-CPR segment is provided by Dr. Ron Blankstein, Associate Director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Program and Director of Cardiac Computed Tomography at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Audio editing by CardioNerds Academy Intern, student doctor Akiva Rosenzveig.

A 76-year-old man with a history of hyperlipidemia presented with one month of progressively worsening fatigue, weight loss, and dyspnea on exertion. Physical exam was notable for a 3/6 systolic murmur at the left upper sternal border, a flopping sound along the sternum heard throughout the cardiac cycle, and JVP elevated to the level of the mandible. TTE revealed a large heterogeneous echodensity in the right ventricular (RV) free wall that extended into the pericardium and into the RV myocardium with mobile components in the RV cavity and obstruction of the RV outflow tract. Nongated CT chest showed a solid nodule in the periphery of the left lower lung lobe. Gated cardiac CTA revealed a large heterogenous mass in the right atrioventricular groove that encased the proximal thoracic aorta and pulmonary artery and invaded the RV myocardium and RV outflow tract along with a large pericardial effusion. On cardiac MRI, the mass was isointense to the myocardium on T1-weighted images, hyperintense on T2-weighted images, and had heterogenous enhancement on late gadolinium enhancement images. Overall, the imaging findings were highly suspicious for cardiac lymphoma which was confirmed with biopsy of the lung nodule; pathology showed a large B cell lymphoma. The patient was treated with R-CHOP therapy (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone), and TTE after 6 cycles of chemotherapy demonstrated resolution of the RV mass.

CardioNerds is collaborating with Radcliffe Cardiology and US Cardiology Review journal (USC) for a ‘call for cases’, with the intention to co-publish high impact cardiovascular case reports, subject to double-blind peer review. Case Reports that are accepted in USC journal and published as the version of record (VOR), will also be indexed in Scopus and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

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