Late overlooked intraluminal right atrial metastasis in endometrial carcinoma

Abstract

We report the case of an 83-year-old woman that presented with progressive dyspnoea due to an intraluminal right atrial metastasis of an endometrial carcinoma that had been diagnosed 4 years earlier. Treatment up to that point consisted of an hysterectomy and resection and radiation of local recurrences. Follow-up had been interpreted as negative, despite a PET-CT 8 months before presentation which had shown increased FDG uptake in the right atrium, but was unfortunately considered benign. After confirmation of metastasis, first-line chemotherapy was started. However, due to poor tolerance and rapid symptom progression, chemotherapy had to be stopped early. She died 2 months later. Cardiac metastasis in endometrial carcinoma is rare. However, the incidence is increasing simultaneously with prolonged cancer survival. Because advances in systemic and radiotherapy now allow curative treatment, more focus should be put on early detection, for example by PET-CT. This way aggressive combined therapy can be started before the burden of cardiac metastasis does not allow it any longer.

Keywords:

• Cardiac metastasis
• endometrial carcinoma
• cardiac oncology
• intraluminal tumor

Ethics statement

Not applicable.

Patient consent

Post-mortem written informed consent to process and publish the data in an open access journal was obtained from the representative of the participant.

Author contributions

Droogné Maarten: corresponding and main author of text. Paelinck Bernard: secondary author and main reviewer of text, Troch Annelies: secondary reviewer of text, Lambelin Marc: review of cardiac imaging.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.