Cardiac autotransplantation for surgical resection of a primary malignant left ventricular tumor.

Primary cardiac sarcomas are rare. In such tumors, surgical resection is sometimes considered necessary to correct obstruction of flow caused by the tumor and to accomplish complete resection. The anatomic difficulties associated with large, primary, intracavitary left-sided sarcomas have led us to use cardiac explantation, ex vivo tumor resection, and cardiac autotransplantation to meet the anatomic challenges of left atrial tumors. We report the case of a patient who had a large, primary, intracavitary, left ventricular sarcoma that was successfully removed by cardiac explantation and ex vivo reconstruction with use of the cardiac autotransplantation technique. This is the 1st report describing the use of cardiac autotransplantation to surgically resect an intracavitary left ventricular malignancy.