Eighteen-year experience with echinococcosus of the heart: clinical and echocardiographic features in 14 patients.

We present a retrospective analysis of clinical symptoms and echocardiographic features in 14 patients having cardiac hydatic cysts and screened during the 18 last years, with surgical correlations in 13. The heart was the sole location of the cyst in six patients. The revealing symptoms were precordial pain (six patients), dyspnea (two patients). A systolic murmur of false pulmonic stenosis was present in three patients. In 13 patients, two-dimensional echocardiographic images of hydatic cysts were those of masses of liquid content with a well-contrasted capsule, which was single in eight patients and multiple in five, one of which had a honeycomb appearance. The mass was solid and calcified in one patient. The outlines of the cysts were particularly sharp on transesophageal echocardiograms (six patients). The cyst size ranged from 1.8 to 11 cm in diameter. Cysts were located in the intramyocardium in 10 patients (left ventricle in four patients, interventricular septum in four patients, right ventricle in two patients), the pericardium in three and the mediatinum in one. There were a Doppler pulmonary valve gradient in three patients. Computed tomography (eight patients) and coronary arteriography (seven patients) have no additional diagnosis value than echocardiography. Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (three patients) was helpful in determining extracardiac extension of the cysts. Transthoracic and transesophageal two-dimensional echocardiography have a central role in diagnosing cardiac hydatic cysts.