Successful Treatment of Cardiac Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma: A Report of Two Cases

Cardiac lymphoma is a rare neoplasm of the heart, defined as an extranodal lymphoma exclusively located in the heart and/or pericardium. Multiple imaging modalities may help to diagnose cardiac tumors;however, pathological diagnosis is difficult because of the limited approaches for obtaining tissue samples. This report describes two cases of prompt histological diagnosis of cardiac lymphoma as diffuse large B-cell type and their successful treatment with chemotherapy. Immunohistochemical analyses revealed one case as CD5-positive and the other as CD5-negative lymphoma. This report highlights the necessity of histological diagnosis and the importance of clinicopathological characterization of cardiac lymphoma. [I Introduction] Cardiac lymphoma is described as a lymphoma involving only the heart and/or the pericardium, or with the main bulk of the tumor localized intrapericardially. It is a very rare disease in immunocompetent patients, estimated to account for 1-2% of primary cardiac tumors and for 0.5% of non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases;cardiac metastases of malignant lymphoma are more common with an incidence of 9-24%1).