melphalan and Atrial-Flutter

The primary cardiac lymphoma (PCL) is an extremely infrequent tumor suffered by immunocompetent patients with a difficult diagnosis and slow progress leading to a serious prognosis and few therapeutically possibilities. It's a primary-cardiac non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) in a patient of 46-year-old, immunocompetent, who started with a congestive heart failure and atrial flutter. Some examinations were carried out such as a transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), a computed tomography (TC) and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and an intracardiac tumor placed in the interauricular septum was detected. The diagnosis was based on a pleural fluid cytological examination. It was decided to follow a chemotherapy treatment and the autologous peripheral blood stem cells transplantation was carried out. The patient remains in full remission thirty-six months after diagnosis and twenty-nine months after the autotransplant. Our clinical experience indicated that an early and accurate diagnosis combined with the appropriate and aggressive antilymphoma therapy can thus help in obtaining a long survival in patients with PCL.

Topics: Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols; Atrial Flutter; Carmustine; Cyclophosphamide; Cytarabine; Doxorubicin; Echocardiography, Transesophageal; Etoposide; Heart Failure; Heart Neoplasms; Heart Septum; Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation; Humans; Hydrocortisone; Immunocompetence; Injections, Spinal; Lymphoma, Large B-Cell, Diffuse; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Melphalan; Methotrexate; Middle Aged; Pleural Effusion; Prednisone; Remission Induction; Tomography, X-Ray Computed; Transplantation Conditioning; Transplantation, Autologous; Vincristine