Pulmonary endarterectomy for calcified amorphous tumour-related pulmonary hypertension

A 42-year-old patient presenting with exertional dyspnoea was diagnosed with functional class II pulmonary hypertension (PH) with severe tricuspid valve insufficiency due to cardiac and pulmonary artery obstruction by calcified amorphous tumour (paCAT). Bilateral (sub)segmental perfusion defects were seen on ventilation/perfusion scan (see online ), while the CT angiogram showed large amounts of calcified radio-opaque material in absence of radiological characteristics of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH), such as webs, stenosis or pouches (figure 1A, C). After multi-institutional (Amsterdam, NL and Papworth, Cambridge, UK) assessment of the case, a decision was made to perform a complete, bilateral, pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA) combined with tricuspid valve replacement. During PEA bone-hard material was retrieved that lacked the (sub)segmental pulmonary artery tails seen in CTEPH (figure 2A and B). After PEA minimal residual paCAT was detected on follow-up CT angiogram (figure 1B,D). Figure 2 aligns...

Source: Thorax - May 15, 2017 Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Bonta, P. I., Bogaard, H. J., van den Berk, I., Niessen, H. W. M., van der Wal, A., Symersky, P. Tags: Images in Thorax, Screening (oncology), Pulmonary hypertension Chest clinic Source Type: research