Anesthetic management of a patient with asymptomatic atrial myxoma for hernia repair

Abstract

Left atrial myxomas are rare cardiac tumours. When diagnosed, these need to be surgically excised as early as possible as these are known to cause dangerous complications, e.g. intracardiac obstruction and embolism. But when presented as an incidental finding on routine echocardiography in a patient presenting with epigastric hernia it creates a clinical dilemma as to which surgery should be performed first. We present one such case of left atrial myxoma in a 58 year old male patient, who underwent hernioplasty under general anesthesia with thoracic epidural analgesia.