Papillary fibroelastoma in the left ventricle resected under the guidance of a gastrointestinal fiberscope.

We report the case of a left ventricular mass in a 72-year-old man with ischemic heart disease. The tumor was deep in the left ventricle, and we considered that it would be difficult to directly visualize. Therefore, we inserted a gastrointestinal fiberscope into the heart. The tumor that was detected appeared to be a papillary fibroelastoma that arose from the left ventricular anterior papillary muscle. We resected the tumor under the guidance of a gastrointestinal fiberscope and performed coronary artery bypass grafting. The gastrointestinal fiberscope was useful for observing and resecting the deep left ventricular tumor.