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Multiple skeletal muscle metastases revealing a cardiac intimal sarcoma

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Abstract

We report the case of a 59-year-old female with progressive bilateral painful swelling of the thighs. MRI revealed multiple intramuscular necrotic masses with similar morphologic patterns. Whole-body CT and 18-FDG PET-CT scans demonstrated additional hypermetabolic muscular masses and a lobulated lesion within the left atrial cavity. As biopsy of a muscular mass was compatible with a poorly differentiated sarcoma with MDM2 oncogene amplification, two diagnoses were discussed: a dedifferentiated liposarcoma with muscle and heart metastases or a primary cardiac sarcoma, mainly a cardiac intimal sarcoma, with muscular metastases, which was finally confirmed by array-comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) in a sarcoma reference center. This case emphasizes the potential for intimal sarcoma to disseminate in skeletal muscle prior to any other organ and the need for a genomic approach in addition to classical radiopathologic analyses to distinguish primary from secondary locations facing simultaneous tumors of the heart and skeletal muscles with MDM2 amplification.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Agnès Ribeiro, Pr. Jean-Michel Coindre and Dr. Frederic Chibon for their contribution and expertise concerning the pathologic analysis as well as Mrs. Estelle Ternamian for medical writing services.

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Correspondence to Pierre-François Lintingre.

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The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

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Drs. Crombé and Lintingre jointly directed this work.

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Crombé, A., Lintingre, PF., Le Loarer, F. et al. Multiple skeletal muscle metastases revealing a cardiac intimal sarcoma. Skeletal Radiol 47, 125–130 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00256-017-2768-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00256-017-2768-5

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