Cardiac Hemangioma: A Rare (or Possible) Cause of Sudden Death in Children

Recently we had occasion to study an apparently healthy 13-year-old girl who died suddenly and unexpectedly. Necropsy revealed that her death was most likely caused by an arrhythmia induced by hemangiomatous involvement of the ventricular conduction system. Cardiac neoplasms have commonly been described in literature of the English language [1], but hemangiomas, especially those of small size, have rarely been reported [1–9]. This lack of reports may be attributed to a failure of detection. It would appear from published cases that some lesions, whether or not hemangiomatous, may be so diminutive as to pass unnoticed even at necropsy examination [1,10–13]. For this reason, as well as the rarity of our encounter, we report the following case.