A newborn infant with intrapericardial rhabdomyosarcoma: a case report

Cardiac tumors are uncommon in neonates and most of them are histologically benign. The most common cardiac tumor in neonates and infants is rhabdomyoma. Malignant cardiac tumors are considerably rarer, and rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is the leading malignancy. To our knowledge, only one case of intrapericardial RMS was reported in the literature, in a seven-month-old baby. Here we present another newborn baby with intrapericardial RMS. Key words: rhabdomyosarcoma, pericardium, newborn. Primary cardiac tumors are uncommon in the fetus and neonate, but with improved imaging techniques such as two-dimensional echocardiography, ultrasonography and magnetic resonance imaging, increasing numbers have been reported in the last decades. Primary tumors are found considerably more frequently than metastatic ones, and most of them are benign. The most common type of heart tumors in children is rhabdomyoma followed by teratoma and fibroma1,2. Holley et al.3 revealed an incidence of primary cardiac tumor as 0.14 % in 14,000 fetal echocardiographies over an eight-year period. Of these tumors, 89 % were rhabdomyoma. Malignant cardiac tumors are considerably rarer in neonates and infants. Only a few cases of malignant tumors have been reported4-6, with the predominant tumor being rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS). Here we present a newborn baby with intrapericardial RMS. To our knowledge, it is the second RMS case in childhood detected in the pericardium. Case Report A 21-day-old newborn infant was admitted to the hospital with respiratory distress and cyanosis. On admission, her weight was 3200 g (25-50 p), length 54 cm (75-90 p), and head circumference 36 cm (75-90 p). Vital sign