Cardiac tumor masquerading as obstructive sleep apnea syndrome.Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg. 2008 Jan 28.

We report a case of a large right atrial hemangioma masquerade the clinical presentation of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) in a 57-year-old man, who was wrongfully treated with nocturnal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) prior to surgical consultation. The exact diagnosis was made during the investigation for his cardiac arrhythmia. A large right atrial tumor obstructing the tricuspid valve intermittently was noted on cardiac echocardiography. His symptoms became worse when the patient was lying flat. Tumor excision under cardiopulmonary bypass was carried out, which confirmed the preoperative finding of cardiac hemangioma. The patient underwent uneventful recovery postoperatively and the symptoms of OSAS settled after surgery. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of right atrial tumor masquerades the clinical presentation of OSAS.

Cardiac hemangioma: features on cardiovascular magnetic resonance.J Cardiovasc Magn Reson. 2007;9(6):873-6.

We present a case of cardiac capillary hemangioma in a patient who presented with a history of recurrent episodes of syncope. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance played an important role in the diagnosis of cardiac hemangioma in our patient.

Incidental in vivo detection of an isolated hemangioma of the aortic valve in a man with a history of renal transplantation.Virchows Arch. 2006 Jul;449(1):121-3. Epub 2006 Apr 25.

Hemangiomas of the cardiac valves are exceptional. To our knowledge, only ten cases of valve hemangiomas, six in the mitral and four in the tricuspid valve, have been reported in the English literature. We describe an incidentally detected aortic valve hemangioma of a 62-year-old man with chronic, degenerative aortic valve stenosis, who underwent renal transplantation 7 years before. We believe that this is the first report of a hemangioma in this localization and the first one in association with solid organ transplantation. The review of the literature of the adult cases of valve hemangioma, including this report, revealed that the average age was 47.2 years (range, 24 to 68 years). No clear sex predominance has been noted. Patients can be asymptomatic or experience sudden death. Symptomatic patients have complaints of palpitations, dyspnea, or syncopal episodes. Histologically, these valve tumors are classified as capillary, cavernous, and mixed. Mean tumor size is 1.1 cm (range, 0.6 to 2 cm). In 50% of cases the hemangioma is an incidental finding at autopsy or in a removed valve. Valve aortic hemangioma, despite its rarity, should be considered in the differential diagnosis of vascular lesions of this cardiac valve.