[Myxoma of the left atrium, Clinical outcome of 100 operated patients].

One hundred patients operated for left atrial myxoma in the same surgical department underwent clinical and anatomical assessment at long-term from 1959 to July 1995 (66 women and 34 men, average age 52.2 years). The clinical presentation was related to mitral valve obstruction in half the cases (dyspnoea, cough, pulmonary oedema), the presentation in the other half of cases being very variable. The widespread use of echocardiography has relegated other investigations to a subsidiary role: auscultation, radiology, ECG (9 cases diagnosed by echocardiography performed for another indication). Serious complications of left atrial myxoma include systemic embolism : 37 cases out of the 100 in this series, including 10 plurifocal but mainly cerebral (19 cases including 11 isolated cerebral emboli). Surgical treatment is well established, should not be deferred and gives excellent results (2 early postoperative deaths out of 100 cases in the early years of the study). There were 6 cases of recurrences including 3 cases of Carney's syndrome. Clinico-pathological correlations showed that mitral stenotic effects occurred when the tumour diameter exceeded 5 cm and embolism was associated with tumours having multiple villositi. Histopathological analysis distinguished between active and inactive tumours, differentiated or not, and enabled the elaboration of hypotheses on the rate of growth of the tumour and on the absence of true metastases. Histopathological techniques also show the presence of lymphoplasmocytic infiltration, the sign of secretion of interleukin 6 by the myxoma, a cytokine involved in the general inflammatory process and which explains the unusual clinical presentation sometimes observed.