Primary cardiac tumours: a single-center 41-year experience.

Primary cardiac tumours are extremely rare with the most commonest being left atrial myxomas. In general, surgical resection is indicated, whenever the tumour formation is mobile and embolization can be suspected. Within 17280 patients receiving heart surgery at the Innsbruck Medical University, 78 patients (0.45%) underwent tumourectomy of primary cardiac tumours. The majority of patients (63) suffered from a left or right atrial myxoma, 12 showed a papillary fibroelastoma of the valves at echocardiographical or histological examination, 1 suffered from a hemangioma, 1 from a chemodectoma, and another one from a rhabdomyosarcoma. The mean age of cardiac tumour patients was 54.29 ± 13.28 years (ranging from 18 to 83 years). 67.95% of the patients were female and 32.05% were male. The majority of tumours were found incidentally; 97.44% of the patients showed no tumour recurrence.