Cardiac rhabdomyomas in a newborn baby. Early diagnosis and treatment.

Cardiac tumours are rarities in newborn infants. The majority of them are rhabdomyomas as a manifestation of the basic disease-tuberous sclerosis. The clinical picture may vary from serious arrhythmias to A-V valve obstruction and gross myocardial dysfunction. Therefore these patients are extremely poor candidates for invasive diagnostic procedures and surgical treatment. Our patient had intrauterine cardiac arrhythmias, and a prenatal echocardiogram showed features of A-V septal defect malformation. Therefore the echocardiogram was repeated soon after birth and it revealed intracardiac tumours. The patient was operated on the first day of life and four intracavitary tumours were successfully removed.