Malignant tumors do not affect the heart muscle as often as other internal organs. Perhaps the reason for this is that it eats blood better than the rest of the body. The metabolic processes here are faster, which means a much stronger defensive reaction.
A heart tumor can have a primary form and a secondary one. The first group includes benign and malignant neoplasms. The second includes all metastatic cancer cells that approach the muscle of the heart through the lymphatic tract and blood flow from the affected organs.
Types of tumors
By the type of altered cell structure of a heart tumor, there can be:
Let's consider each view in more detail.
Benign heart tumor
This species is primary and originates in cardiac tissues. This includes:
- Miksomu - is a common type of heart tumor, detected in half the cases of all diagnosed benign tumors. It is noted that the hereditary factor plays a large role in the predisposition to the onset of a tumor. The structure of the myxoma can be solid, mucous, or loose. With a loose structure, tumors are most dangerous due to the fact that malignant tissue degeneration is possible.
- Papillary fibroelastoma. It is considered the second most common type of neoplasm. It is located on the valve papillae (usually aortic or mitral), and prevents their full closure at the time of ventricular contraction. When identifying the causes of valvular insufficiency is often diagnosed. Fibroelastoma has a favorable prognosis provided timely prosthetics of damaged valves.
- Rhabdomyoma. Most often diagnosed in childhood, located in the left ventricle, causes a violation of myocardial conduction. Symptoms of a heart tumor of this type are the appearance on the ECG of blockades and a violation of the heart rhythm. If rhabdomyoma is located near the sinus node, severe rhythm disturbances are not excluded, cardiac arrest may even occur.
- Fibroma. In most cases, detected in childhood, is a tumor process in the connective tissue. May lead to stenosis of the opening between the ventricle and the atrium or to valve deformity. Sometimes with external localization on the pericardium, pericarditis is possible. The classification of heart tumors does not end there.
- Hemangioma. It is extremely rare and does not cause changes in the work of the heart. Only if it grows into the sinus node, then a heart rhythm failure is possible, in severe cases - a fatal outcome.
- Lipoma. It can be found in any part of the myocardium. It does not manifest itself in any way with small sizes. Depending on the location, a greatly expanded lipoma provokes various cardiac failures. Not excluded degeneration into liposarcoma.
An intrapericardial tumor is less common than other localization. Most often, this tumor is located in the right ventricle of the heart.
Any heart tumor, if it is benign, develops in rare cases and is detected before serious violations in the myocardium. Severe heart failure or cardiac arrest is possible only if a person ignores the symptoms for a long time. This cannot be allowed, therefore it is necessary to visit doctors in a timely manner and undergo a comprehensive examination by cardiologists.
Malignant tumors
These neoplasms are extremely dangerous. A primary tumor of the heart is extremely rare. As a rule, a malignant process develops with metastasis. By the nature of the cancer cells, this can be:
- angiosarcoma (similar in structure to vascular epithelium);
- rhabdomyosarcoma (cancer in the striated muscles, sometimes grows through the entire myocardium, causes heart attack symptoms)
- fibrous cancerous histiocytoma (jelly-like cancer formation, characterized in that it grows in the surrounding tissue);
- liposarcoma.
Other cancers are also possible, having a similar structure to the organ from which metastasis began.
The pericardial region is more often affected by metastases, less often they are in other parts of the myocardium. The manifestation of signs of heart damage depends on the localization of the tumor process .
Causes of the appearance of a malignant tumor of the heart
As a primary tumor, heart cancer develops directly from the tissues of the heart muscle itself. But it happens in very rare cases.
More often, the tumor has a secondary form of malignant pathology. Cancer cells get from the affected organs with blood into the heart. The cardiovascular system passes throughout the body, and this facilitates the metastasis path.
Malignant tumors localized in the gastrointestinal tract and in the pelvic organs can lead to the rapid uncontrolled division of affected cells. As a result of this, new goals are quickly achieved with metastases; unfortunately, the heart also belongs here.
Now, all the causes of damage to the heart muscle by cancer cells are still not known. But some of them include:
- heart muscle surgery due to injury or other reasons;
- blood clots
- atherosclerosis of the brain and vascular system;
- hereditary predisposition by genotype;
- constant stress and anxiety undermine the immune system and weaken the body.
What varieties of primary formations are there?
The most common malignant neoplasms include sarcoma of the heart, which is diagnosed more often than lymphoma. This pathology of a person in middle age is striking. This group of diseases includes angiosarcoma, undifferentiated sarcoma, malignant fibrous histiocytoma, and leiomyosarcoma.
The left atrium is mainly affected, due to compression of the tissues, the mitral opening suffers from the tumor. As a rule, all this leads to heart failure, the spread of extensive metastases in the lungs.
Quite rarely, in the male half of the population, mesothelioma occurs. With this tumor, the brain, spine, and nearby soft tissues suffer from metastases.
Consider the main symptoms of a heart tumor.
Symptomatology
At first, the disease is asymptomatic, and this is the main danger of heart cancer. The patient may not even realize that he has oncology. Common signs of malaise include:
- subfebrile periodic temperature;
- fatigue and weakness;
- joint pain;
- sharp causeless weight loss.
But many diseases are characterized by such signs, so they can confuse the sick person. He may not go to an oncologist or cardiologist for a long time. Sometimes the diagnosis is really very difficult, even experts can not figure it out.
The location of the neoplasm affects the exact signs of a heart tumor. The history of occurrence, primary or secondary origin also matters.
What diagnosis of a neoplasm is necessary?
The neoplasm is characterized by the following symptoms:
- an increase in heart muscle in size by ultrasound;
- pain in the heart and sternum;
- persistent arrhythmia;
- squeezing a vena cava with a growing tumor, which can lead to swelling, pain, shortness of breath;
- cardiac tamponade, manifested by a decrease in the shock force of the heart muscle; accumulation between the sheets of pericardial fluid;
- thickened fingers;
- the appearance of swelling and swelling on the face;
- causeless rashes on various areas of the body;
- numbness in the fingers;
- swelling on the lower extremities;
- fatigue at light loads;
- fainting, dizziness, headaches.
Pathology can affect the contractility of the heart, it becomes weakened, heart failure quickly develops. The patient suffocates.
Naturally, this does not affect the course of the disease in the best way, the possibility of a happy cure is becoming less and less. Metastatic symptoms are present.
From regional organs that are affected by oncology, metastasis of malignant cells occurs. Such organs include the thyroid gland, the tops of the kidneys, lungs and mammary gland in women.
With a cancer of the blood, melanomas and lymphomas, these consequences are possible for the heart muscle. A heart tumor develops rapidly, after which a pericardium representing the lining of the heart joins this .
It is characterized by the following symptoms:
- severe shortness of breath;
- acute pericardial inflammation;
- arrhythmic phenomena;
- sharply enlarged heart in an x-ray;
- the noise of systole.
Symptoms and x-rays are not all diagnostic methods used to detect heart cancer. Computer tomography and magnetic resonance imaging of the heart muscle are also used. Echocardiogram indicators are used additionally.
Most often, time is missed and an already serious stage of heart sarcoma is diagnosed with metastases to nearby organs, mainly the lungs and brain.
What is the treatment for a heart tumor?
Therapies
In medical statistics there is no information about the practical cure for malignant heart tumors. Only the palliative method of therapy remains.
Due to the complete damage to the organ and the developing process of metastasis, surgical intervention is excluded. Patients are prescribed chemotherapy and radiation, which will somewhat alleviate the patient's condition. Still operations are performed for heart tumors.
The treatment will have results if prophylaxis is carried out, doctors are consulted on time, examined and therapy is started in the early stages of the disease.
It is necessary to work on strengthening the immune system, because it is able to protect the body from many diseases.
Cancer cells are not introduced into the body from the outside, but they are actively formed from their own cells and have a huge aggressive force of aggressive attacks on healthy cells. About foreign structures, immune cells receive information that is in transfer factors.
If there are a small number of these cells, the immune structures will not have enough information about the imminent danger. And the new cells of the immune system do not know what they need to do and what to protect from.
Surgery
How is a heart tumor removed? Before non-invasive cardiac imaging was developed, valve damage was considered an indication for surgery. Since the diagnosis was uninformative.
Now, thanks to ultrasound, not a single patient with an education in the heart was operated on without visualization. With the help of CT and MRI, data are obtained on the characteristics of tissues and the spread of infiltration.
Medial sternotomy is a typical access to benign tumors. At the same time, extracorporeal circulation with two-cavity drainage is connected. In heart surgery, calm manipulations are recommended due to the fact that most intracavitary heart tumors are fragile. Apply intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography, which allows you to determine which location in the tumor, open the heart cavity, direct the cannula, monitor the integrity of the tumor during surgery. Wide surgical access is an indispensable condition for resection with a single tumor block. The aspirated blood surrounding the tumor does not return to the extracorporeal circulation. This is necessary to prevent the possible dissemination of malignant cells.
Forecast
The prognosis of the disease depends on the type of cells and the extent to which the surgery was performed:
- The life expectancy of cancer patients is on average from two to seven years (this is affected by the rate of metastasis of the body and the location of new metastases).
- The prognosis is affected by donor-recipient compatibility during implantation or implantation of a donor heart. If the conditions are favorable, then such patients live no more than ten years.
- With benign formations and their removal, the prognosis is favorable, in 95% of cases a stable remission is observed, if the regular intake of supporting medications and medical recommendations are observed.
If the treatment is symptomatic, then the patient will have to live from seven months to two years.
Unfortunately, heart tumors are diagnosed late, when serious organ abnormalities are already present. But even if a person has heart cancer, then do not give in to despair. Survival statistics are approximate, and patients with strict observance of medical recommendations after removal of a heart tumor can live longer than the years indicated in the prognosis.