Clinical Significance of Incidentally Detected Aneurysms of the Membranous Ventricular Septum in Adults by Multidetector Computed Tomography

Although the clinical relevance of aneurysm of the membranous ventricular septum (AMVS) in adults is unclear, the frequency of AMVS detection has been increased because cardiac multidetector computed tomography has been widely adopted for the evaluation of coronary artery disease. Therefore, we aimed to assess the clinical significance of AMVS in a longitudinal study. In 30,120 adults with suspected coronary artery disease who underwent cardiac multidetector computed tomography in 3 hospitals, 52 patients with AMVS were retrospectively selected. We evaluated the clinical symptoms and electrocardiographic abnormalities (cross-sectional study) and the prevalence of embolic stroke (observational study) during a median 40-month (range 6 to 74 months) observation period. For the assessment of embolic stroke, we excluded 9 patients with other explainable embolic sources. Conduction abnormalities were noted in 13 of 52 adults (25%) with AMVS on electrocardiography and embolic stroke occurred in 6 of 43 patients (14%). The mean age and the prevalence of hypertension were significantly higher in the embolic stroke group than in the event-free group (p