[Echocardiography in patients with malignant metastatic neoplasms of the heart and great vessels].

Two-dimensional echocardiography was used to study malignant metastatic neoplasms of the heart and great vessels in 20 patients, 13 males and seven females, whose ages ranged from 15 to 72 years. Five patients had lung cancer; two each had breast cancer, malignant melanoma, hepatoma and one each had gastric cancer, urinary bladder cancer, adrenocortical carcinoma, malignant lymphoma, angiosarcoma, fibrosarcoma, leiomyosarcoma; and two had cancers with unknown primaries. Tumor invasion was demonstrated echocardiographically in the left atrium in one each with breast cancer, fibrosarcoma and gastric cancer; in the right atrium in two with hepatomas; in the right atrium and right ventricle in one patient with adrenocortical carcinoma; in the left ventricle in one with lung cancer; and in the pulmonary artery in one with malignant melanoma. Massive pericardial effusion was observed in 11 of 20 patients; two with pericardial tumors including malignant lymphoma and lung cancer. We conjectured that metastatic tumors in the right cardiac cavities came through the inferior vena cava, and other tumors in the left atrium, left ventricle and pericardium developed from direct extension of the primary lesions. There was an 80% mortality of the patients during the observation period, and the average survival period after the diagnosis of cardiac metastases was 5.5 months. However, one patient was still living after two years of radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Echocardiography proved a useful, non-invasive means for the detection and follow-up observation of metastatic cardiac tumors.