Why the study?
Lung lobectomy can cause cerebral infarction from pulmonary vein stump thrombi, but the utility of TEE for visualizing these thrombi is less known compared with contrast-enhanced CT.
Can transesophageal echocardiography detect thrombi in the pulmonary vein stump post lung lobectomy?
Can transesophageal echocardiography detect thrombi in the pulmonary vein stump post lung lobectomy?
TEE is a useful imaging modality for detecting and evaluating the mobility of thrombi in the pulmonary vein stump post lung lobectomy, helping identify the cause of stroke.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Supports TEE evaluation of pulmonary vein stump thrombi post-lobectomy in stroke; hypothesis-generating, needs prospective confirmation before practice change.
Lung lobectomy can cause a cerebral infarction due to thrombus formation in the pulmonary vein (PV). While contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) has commonly been used to detect thrombi, the utility of transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) for thrombus visualization, in the PV stump, is less known. Herein, a series of cases are provided, in which TEE was able to detect a thrombus in the PV stump, as an embolic source of a cerebral infarction. Transesophageal echocardiography is a powerful imaging technique for evaluating thrombi mobility and properties, which are impossible with enhanced CT. Thus, TEE can contribute to identifying the cause of stroke when the embolic source is unknown.
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Kobayashi et al. (2024) studied this question.
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