What type of study is this?

This is a Retrospective Study study.

September 10, 2025Open Access

Primary Cardiac Tumors: Clinical Presentations and Pathological Features in a Multicenter Cohort

EAEsra Çobankent AytekinKonya Numune Hastanesi KBKemal BehzatoğluAnkara University AAArzu AkçayIstanbul Yeni Yüzyıl University

Key Points

Primary cardiac tumors, although rare, present significant diagnostic challenges and can lead to serious outcomes.
The study documented that cardiac myxoma is more prevalent than papillary fibroelastoma, contrary to WHO classifications.
Among 274 patients, 43.7% presented with dyspnea, highlighting the diverse clinical characteristics of these tumors.
Surgical resection was performed in all cases, with infection being the most common postoperative complication.

Abstract

Background: Cardiac tumors are rare neoplasms with a wide spectrum of clinical presentations, ranging from asymptomatic cases to fatal outcomes. According to the 2021 thoracic tumor classification of the World Health Organization (WHO), papillary fibroelastoma (PFE) is the most common primary cardiac tumor. This study aimed to aggregate and examine data regarding the prevalence, clinical characteristics, and histological results of cardiac tumors. Methods: This multicenter retrospective study was conducted across seven tertiary care institutions and included 274 patients diagnosed with histopathologically confirmed cardiac tumors between January 2013 and December 2024. Results: This study included 274 patients, with an average age of 52.6 ± 16.6 years. Of the study participants, 120 (43.8%) were male and 154 (56.2%) were female. The most prevalent clinical manifestations were dyspnea (43.7%), thoracic pain (22.5%), and cardiac palpitations (21.1%). Echocardiography was the principal diagnostic method, revealing an average tumor size of 3 cm. The most commonly observed mass was cardiac myxoma (CM) in 192 patients (70.1%). The second most frequently detected mass was PFE (28 cases, 10.2%). The third most common cardiac mass was a metastatic tumor (6.9%). Surgical resection was performed in all patients, with infection being the most prevalent consequence, followed by effusion. Conclusions: Cardiac tumors, albeit uncommon, provide considerable diagnostic and treatment difficulties. Our research is founded on an extensive case series that has been histopathologically validated and sourced from various national tertiary centers. This comprehensive dataset offers epidemiological and clinical insights regarding heart tumors in Turkey. Another key finding of our study is that, even though the 5th edition of the 2021 WHO Classification of Thoracic Tumors lists PFE as the most common primary cardiac tumor, myxoma is actually the most common primary cardiac tumor in our study and in many other studies. This finding demonstrates a significant discrepancy between the current international classification and real-world data and suggests that tumor distribution may be related to regional and demographic differences.

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