{"id":26914,"date":"2021-03-30T07:55:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T07:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org\/?p=18411"},"modified":"2024-11-03T15:14:59","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T15:14:59","slug":"science-surgery-can-cancers-develop-in-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/science-surgery-can-cancers-develop-in-the-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Surgery: \u2018Can cancers develop in the heart?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Black<\/div>\n

Our Science Surgery series answers your cancer questions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cancer can develop in nearly every organ in the body, including vital organs like the brain and lungs. As organs go, the heart is pretty vital \u2013 it\u2019s basically one big muscle whose purpose is to pump blood around our bodies. Despite its importance, you very rarely hear about tumours developing in the heart. Which begs the question, is there something special about the organ that shields it from cancer?<\/p>\n

Dr Rohin Francis, cardiologist and researcher, says that it comes down to one very simple reason.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s because the cancers are errors in cell division. And that\u2019s just something that doesn\u2019t happen very much in the heart. And I think this is perhaps something that a lot of people don\u2019t realise is that heart cells \u2013 by which I mean myocardial muscle cells \u2013 don\u2019t divide, to any real extent. This means that once they\u2019re dead \u2013 they\u2019re dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s a matter of division \u2013 the more the cells divide, the higher the chance of DNA errors (mutations) developing that can lead to cancer. So tissues where cells divide more frequently \u2013 the breast, liver and skin for example \u2013 are at higher risk.<\/p>\n

Data has shown that cardiac tumours that develop in the heart (known as primary tumours) have an incidence of less than 0.02%.<\/a> Of these, around 25% are cancerous and are most commonly sarcomas<\/a>. This means that they develop in the connective tissue in the heart, rather than heart muscle cells themselves.<\/p>\n

Another reason for the somewhat surprising lack of cancer is that the heart is quite protected, as Francis explains. \u201cOrgans like the lungs and skin are exposed to carcinogens such as tobacco smoke and ultraviolet light, contributing to lung cancer and skin cancer. However, the heart\u2019s placement within the body means that it isn\u2019t as exposed to the outside environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

So hearts don\u2019t get tumours?<\/h2>\n

But just because the heart is protected from the outside world doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s protected from tumours growing in other parts of the body, as Francis explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get metastatic spread of cancers to the heart quite frequently. So probably about one fifth of metastatic cancer<\/a> will have some trace that\u2019s found in the heart, but those are all secondary. And the most common are lung cancers, which frequently spread to the heart because the lung directly drains to the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite this frequency, cancers spreading to the heart often go unnoticed. \u201cEvidence of metastatic spread to the heart is only found in post-mortem studies in a lot of cases because it doesn\u2019t really cause a lot of noticeable problems,\u201d says Francis. \u201cClassically, the organs where spread causes a lot of symptoms include the brain and the bones, where it can be extremely painful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plop plop, who\u2019s there?<\/h2>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean that hearts don\u2019t develop tumours at all \u2013 it\u2019s just that they aren\u2019t cancerous. Data from autopsy studies have shown that around 75% of all primary tumours found in the heart are benign<\/a>. With the heart being made up of multiple different types of cells, these tumours are diverse.<\/p>\n

One of the most common is a tumour known as a myxoma. This normally develops in the atrium and looks like \u201ca blob of rubbery tissue on a stalk that has attached itself to the wall of the heart. When you examine it, you hear a plopping noise that is genuinely called a myxomatous plop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being non-cancerous, these structures can still pose a threat.<\/p>\n

Myxomas can be very mobile and so can move between the chambers of the heart, damaging the surrounding tissue. Without very rapid surgery, they can expand into the entire cardiac chamber and obstruct blood flow \u2013 causing issues like strokes, blood clots and even heart attacks. But these cases are fairly common and easily treated with surgery so \u201cthey\u2019ve got a very good prognosis and it\u2019s rare that someone will have a major problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then do we really need to study the heart?<\/h2>\n

Although, comparatively speaking, the heart isn\u2019t at high risk of developing cancer, Francis emphasises the need for cancer researchers and specialists to study the heart.<\/p>\n

Cancers and life-saving treatments for them (such as some chemotherapy drugs and radiotherapy) can have damaging effects to the heart<\/a>. \u201cThis means that there\u2019s now a sub-speciality of cardiology known as cardio-oncology, which hopes to understand these effects a bit more and bridge that gap between cancer specialists and cardiologists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex<\/em><\/p>\n

More on this topic<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Science Surgery series answers your cancer questions. Cancer can develop in nearly every organ in the body, including vital organs like the brain and lungs. As organs go, the heart is pretty vital \u2013 it\u2019s basically one big muscle whose purpose is to pump blood around our bodies. Despite its importance, you very rarely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43885,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26914\/revisions\/43885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}