Abstract
A 73-year-old woman presented with hemoptysis. Although we could only see a little oral bleeding due to stomatitis, a chest CT scan occasionally showed a calcified tumor measuring 3.5 cm in longer diameter in the anterior mediastinum. Tumor markers were in normal limits. MRI showed a low intensity tumor in T1-weighted, and a high intensity tumor in T2-weighted images, and these findings were compatible with a thymoma with cystic degeneration. We performed total thymectomy with median sternotomy. The tumor 2 cm in diameter was capsulated by thymus and pericardial fat. It consisted of cystic and solid parts by palpation. Histologically it was diagnosed as cavernous hemangioma with calcification. A 1.7-cm cyst adjacent to the caudad aspect of the tumor was found, but there was no thymoma. Post operative course was uneventful and she was discharged 9 days after the operation. Cavenous hemangioma on the mediastinum is essentially rare. In this case, it was hard to diagnose the heterogeneous tumor due to the existence of neighboring cystic part and calcification, which mimicked a cystic thymoma from imagings.
In conclusion, cavernous hemangioma should be considered in differential diagnosis of a mediastinum tumor.
