An 81-year-old man referred for pneumonia ended up with an unexpected heart problem. A CT scan picked up a mass about 7.6 centimeters long bulging from his right ventricle, the chamber that pumps blood to the lungs. It was filled with blood, connected to the heart through several narrow slits, and looked like an aneurysm, a dangerous outpouching of the heart wall.
It was actually a lipoma, a benign fatty tumor, and one that had taken on a strikingly deceptive shape. Surgeons at Gifu University Hospital in Japan removed it and described the case on Aug. 30 in Case Reports in Surgery.
