• Yuan-Yuan Sun, Xin-Yu Wang, Guo-Ming Zhang, Xu Chen, Bo Jing, Yuan Wu, Yu Song, and Mao-Long Su.
• Department of Ultrasound.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2021 Mar 12; 100 (10): e24033e24033.

IntroductionOne of the purposes of echocardiography is to determine the nature of a space-occupying lesion. The conventional transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) is the preferred method for the diagnosis of cardiac space-occupying lesions as it can reveal the baseline information. For patients with poor conditions, however, TTE cannot clearly display the boundary, it has a limited role in determining the nature of the lesions.Patient ConcernsA 47-year-old woman presented with intermittent fever for 7 days and chest distress/shortness of breath for 5 days.DiagnosisIn our current case, we inferred the nature of space-occupying lesions in the left atrium more accurately using transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) than TTE, which may offer diagnostic evidence for surgical treatment.InterventionsThe patient underwent surgical resection of the left atrial tumor and reconstruction of the left atrial wall. However, the patient's posterior lobe of the mitral valve was infiltrated by tumor, which was difficult to completely remove.OutcomesEchocardiography was performed 3 months after surgery and the tumor recurred in the posterior lobe of the mitral valve. Although almost all tumors have been removed by surgery, the average survival time is often less than 1 year, as it is difficult to completely remove and easy to relapse with poor prognosis.ConclusionTransesophageal echocardiography (TEE) plays a relatively more important role in the determination and differential diagnosis of cardiac space-occupying lesions.Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

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