An Unusual Cardiac Metastasis: Right Atrial Chondrosarcoma Diagnosed With Multimodality Cardiac Imaging

Diagnosis and treatment of right ventricular metastasis from esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: An unusual case report and a literature review

BACKGROUND

Right ventricular metastasis from esophageal squamous cell carcinoma is very rare and only seen in few case reports. Patients with cardiac metastasis have a poor prognosis with a median survival period of 4 weeks due to the lack of standardized and effective treatment guidelines. Therefore, we aimed to clarify the feature and treatment of cardiac metastasis through literature review and reporting of an unusual case.

CASE

We reported a case of a 67 years-old man diagnosed as right ventricular metastasis from esophageal squamous cell with the help of echocardiography and pathological biopsy. Moreover, the patient survival period reached an astonishing 6 months, which far exceeded 4 weeks reported in previous literature.

METHODS

We searched for relevant literature in the past decade on PUBMED and summarized the content of the literature to better clarify cardiac metastasis.

CONCLUSION

Cardiac metastatic likely to occur in the elderly and in the right side of heart which related to hemodynamics. Surgical resection of metastatic tumors is the main treatment method, but patients usually die during the perioperative period due to its complexity and difficulty. Meanwhile, we have proposed some potentially effective treatment measures.

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound in pediatric echocardiography

The safety and benefits of cardiac contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) have been demonstrated in children and adolescents for a variety of clinical indications, including congenital heart disease. Cardiac CEUS is performed with US and the intravenous administration of ultrasound contrast agents (UCAs). It improves transthoracic echocardiography, which can be challenging in children and adults with acoustic window limitations (e.g., from obesity) and alterations in chest wall and cardiac geometry (e.g., from prior surgical procedures). Cardiac CEUS is also used to evaluate ischemia in the follow-up of congenital and acquired heart disease. In 2019, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a UCA for pediatric echocardiography. This article focuses on the clinical applications of UCAs in pediatric and adult echocardiography, outlining its diagnostic value, safety and potential for future applications.