Cardiac cavernous hemangioma mimicking pericardial cyst: atypical echocardiographic appearance of a rare cardiac tumor

Cavernous hemangioma is a rare tumor with infrequent cardiac involvement. Preoperative or antemortem diagnosis may be difficult. Several prior case reports have described echocardiographic findings of cavernous hemangioma. We report here a 50-year-old white female patient with this tumor. Transesophageal echocardiography detected a mass with an echocardiographic appearance not previously described for cavernous hemangioma. The tumor appeared as a large echolucent unilocular cystic mass, leading to an erroneous preoperative diagnosis of pericardial cyst. This previously unreported finding should be recognized by echocardiographers in the evaluation of cardiac masses.