Medical Must-See: A heavy heart or cardiac cement emboli?
This patient was just the third case reported in the literature.
A routine CT scan has led doctors to a rare discovery: cardiac emboli caused by bone cement that had gone astray.
The 38-year-old patient had a history of osteoporosis secondary to hyperparathyroidism and had received antiresorptive injections for two years.
She underwent percutaneous vertebroplasty to treat osteoporotic fractures of T7-T9 vertebrae.
Later, a routine abdominal and pelvic CT scan to evaluate a kidney stone turned up an incidental finding: linear and nodular hyperdensities along the right ventricular free wall, which were confirmed by cardiac CT angiography.
