Cardiac Rhabdomyoma in a Newborn Infant —The Diagnostic Role of Echocardiography—

A cardiac tumor was detected in a 10 day old boy using 2-dimensional echocardiography. A heart murmur had indicated the presence of congenital heart disease; however a tumor in the right ventricular outflow tract was eventually detected by 2-dimensional echocardiography. Pulsed Doppler echocardiography was used and the pressure gradient across the tumor was determined to be 18 mmHg. The stenosis caused by the tumor had developed progressively, and a resection of the right ventricular tumor was performed at an age of 7 months. The results of the histological analysis indicated the tumor was a rhabdomyoma. Since a patient with a cardiac tumor generally has no specific symptoms, two-dimensional echocardiography was the most useful and most rapid noninvasive method to determine the extent and the location of the tumor. Furthermore the degree of stenosis produced by the tumor could be evaluated using pulsed Doppler echocardiography.