Atrial myxoma as a cause of stroke: emboli detection and thrombolytic treatment

It presents a case of a 42-year-old female patient who was admitted to the stroke unit for right-sided hemiplegia and global aphasia, without conventional stroke risk factors. As the patient presented within the therapeutic time window and had no contraindications for thrombolysis, intravenous thrombolytic treatment was initiated. Brain CT showed multiple hypodense partly confluent lesions in the territory of the left middle cerebral artery. For the purpose of determining the etiology of the stroke, TCD was performed and after cerebral microemboli were detected, transthoracic echocardiography was indicated, the finding of which showed the presence of a myxoma in the left atrium. The patient underwent surgery and thereafter her neurological deficits improved.