The latest issue of CASE is now available with intriguing reports, including “Ticking Time Bomb: Embolic Risks and Complex Management of an Exceptionally Large Papillary Fibroelastoma.” CASE Editor-in-Chief Vincent Sorrell, MD, FASE, remarked, “Although echocardiography (and cardiovascular imaging in general) can never provide a definitive diagnosis, there are many characteristic features of cardiac masses that guide us toward the correct tissue diagnosis. We are lucky to have a Journal that provides robust descriptions, multimodal correlations, and surgical or pathologic confirmation, compiling these CASEs in a growing archive of the common and uncommon presentations of both rare and common masses/tumors. In this month’s issue, we once again have several robust CASE reports that provide incrementally unique aspects of previously reported cardiac masses. Vincent et al. managed a patient with a large LA mass which was hemodynamically significant and associated with multiple strokes. The pre-operative diagnosis from echocardiography was confidently a cardiac myxoma, but proven by histopathology to be a very impressive, papillary fibroelastoma. We are reminded that echo is unable to provide a definitive diagnosis; but readers can now expand their preoperative differential diagnosis.”
Also included in the Cardiac and Pseudotumors category, Khaleel et al. utilize TTE, TEE, CT, and ICE to report on a rarity readers will want to note in their patient with multiple tricuspid valve blood cysts. In the Just Another Day in the Echo Lab category, Nguyen et al. share TTE images and correlative intraoperative findings of a young man with an untreated subarterial VSD and the progression to a ruptured sinus of Valsalva aneurysm. Kawabe et al. demonstrate a unique approach of using emergent aortic cross-clamping and the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit in their case of an LV thrombus that was dislodged and moving freely during intraoperative TEE.
Notably, this issue features two reports selected from our recent Sonographer Challenge—a report on a premature neonate with acute respiratory distress found to have an occlusive pulmonary embolus, as well as a 10-year-old with infective endocarditis and periannular extension of infection in an autograft diagnoses after undergoing the Ross procedure for congenital aortic valve disease.
Readers can look forward to Dr. Sorrell’s editorial, which discusses the etymology of “artifacts” and how to navigate the noise in your daily echo practice. Be sure to check out the latest Unlock the CASE on the CASE homepage, which was the winning entry from the Cardio-oncology SIG Case Competition.
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