Concomitant minimally invasive surgery for tricuspid valve papillary fibroelastoma and right lung cancer in an elderly patient: a case report and review of the literature

BACKGROUND: It is very common for patients with newly diagnosed lung masses to have heart disease. However, papillary fibroelastomas (PFEs) of the tricuspid valve (TV) combined with lung cancer are rarely reported. It is thus unclear whether a two-stage surgery or concomitant surgery is optimal. CASE PRESENTATION: We report the case of a 73-year-old Chinese male who was diagnosed with PFEs on the TV by transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) examination while being evaluated to undergo video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) for a right lower lung nodule. We resected both the PFEs and the lung nodule via right minithoracotomy. The surgery was uneventful, and histopathology reports confirmed PFEs of the TV and moderately to poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma. The patient recovered uneventfully, and there was no sign of tumor recurrence during 15 months of follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: We suggest that after careful evaluation, concomitant minimally invasive radical resection of primary lung cancer after cardiac PFE removal is an acceptable and safe treatment strategy and should be performed as soon as possible.