The heart muscle is not as often affected by malignant tumors as other internal organs. Perhaps the reason for this is that it feeds on blood better than the rest of the body. Metabolic processes here are faster, which means that the protective reaction is much stronger.
A tumor of the heart can have a primary form and a secondary one. The first group includes benign and malignant neoplasms. The second includes all metastasized cancer cells that approach the heart muscle through the lymphatic pathways and blood flow from the affected organs.
Types of tumors
According to the appearance of the altered cellular structure of a heart tumor, it can be:
- benign;
- cancerous.
Let's take a closer look at each type.
Benign tumor of the heart
This species is primary and originates in cardiac tissues. These include:
- Myxoma - is a common type of cardiac tumors, detected in half of all diagnosed benign tumors. It is noted thatThe hereditary factor plays a large role in the predisposition to the occurrence of a tumor. The structure of the myxoma may be firm, mucoid, or loose. With a loose structure, tumors are most dangerous due to the fact that malignant degeneration of tissues 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), prevents their full closure at the time of ventricular contraction. When the causes of valvular insufficiency are identified, it is often diagnosed. Fibroelastoma has a favorable prognosis provided timely replacement of damaged valves.
- Rhabdomyoma. It is most often diagnosed in childhood, is located in the left ventricle, causes a violation of myocardial conduction. Symptoms of a heart tumor of this type are the appearance of blockades on the ECG and a violation of the heart rhythm. If the rhabdomyoma is located near the sinus node, then severe rhythm disturbances are not ruled out, and cardiac arrest may even occur.
- Fibroma. In most cases, it is detected in childhood, it is a tumor process in the connective tissue. Can lead to stenosis of the opening between the ventricle and the atrium or to deformation of the valve. 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 failure of the heart rhythm is possible, in severe cases - death.
- Lipomu. It can be found in any part of the myocardium. It does not show itself at all at small sizes. Depending on the location of the localization, a strongly overgrown lipoma provokes various heart failures. It is possible to degenerate into liposarcoma.
Intrapericardial tumor is less common than other localizations. Most often, this tumor is located in the right ventricle of the heart.
Any tumor of the heart, if it is benign, develops in rare cases and is detected before serious disorders in the myocardium. Severe heart failure or cardiac arrest is possible only if a person ignores the symptoms that have arisen for a long time. This cannot be allowed, so you should visit doctors in a timely manner and undergo a comprehensive examination by cardiologists.
Malignant tumors
These neoplasms are extremely dangerous. Tumor of the heart in the primary form is extremely rare. As a rule, a malignant process develops during metastasis. According to the nature of cancer cells, this can be:
- angiosarcoma (similar to vascular epithelium in structure);
- rhabdomyosarcoma (cancer in the striated muscle, sometimes grows through the entire myocardium, causes symptoms of a heart attack)
- fibrous cancerous histiocytoma
- liposarcorma.
Other cancerous tumors are possible, having a similar structure to the organ from which the metastasis started.
Metastasesthe area of a pericardium is more often surprised, less often they happen in other departments of a myocardium. The manifestation of signs of heart damage depends on the localization of the tumor process.
Causes of a malignant tumor of the heart
As a primary tumor, heart cancer develops directly from the tissues of the heart muscle itself. But this happens in very rare cases.
More often the tumor has a secondary form of malignant pathology. From the affected organs with blood, cancer cells enter the heart. The cardiovascular system runs throughout the body, and this facilitates the path of metastases.
Malignant tumors localized in the gastrointestinal tract and in the pelvic organs can lead to rapid uncontrolled division of affected cells. As a result, new targets are quickly reached by metastases, which, unfortunately, includes the heart.
Now all the causes of heart muscle damage by cancer cells are not yet fully known. But some of them include:
- heart muscle surgery due to injury or other reasons;
- clots;
- atherosclerosis of the brain and vascular system;
- hereditary predisposition by genotype;
- constant stress and worries undermine the immune system and weaken the body.
What types of primary formations are there?
The most common malignant neoplasms include cardiac sarcoma, which is diagnosed more often than lymphoma. This is strikinghuman pathology in middle age. This group of diseases includes angiosarcoma, undifferentiated sarcoma, malignant fibrous histiocytoma, leiomyosarcoma.
The left atrium is mainly affected, due to tissue compression, the tumor suffers from the mitral orifice. As a rule, all this leads to heart failure, the spread of extensive metastases to the lungs.
Mesothelioma is quite rare in the male half of the population. With this tumor, the brain, spine, and nearby soft tissues suffer from metastases.
Let's consider the main symptoms of a heart tumor.
Symptomatics
At first, the disease is asymptomatic, and this is the main danger of heart cancer. The patient may not even know that he has oncology. Common signs of illness include:
- subfebrile periodical temperature;
- fatigue and weakness;
- painful joints;
- sudden unexplained 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 a cardiologist for a long time. Sometimes diagnostics can be really very difficult, even specialists cannot 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 should be done?
Neoplasmcharacterized by the following symptoms:
- an increase in the size of the heart muscle on ultrasound;
- pain in the heart and sternum;
- permanent arrhythmia;
- compression of the vena cava by a growing tumor, which can lead to swelling, pain, shortness of breath;
- cardiac tamponade, manifested by a decrease in the impact force of the heart muscle; accumulation of fluid between the layers of the pericardium;
- thick fingers;
- appearance of swelling and puffiness on the face;
- unreasonable rashes on various areas of the body;
- numbness in fingers;
- edema on the lower limbs;
- fatigue at light loads;
- fainting, dizziness, headaches.
Pathology can affect the contractility of the heart, it becomes weakened, heart failure develops rapidly. The patient is suffering from suffocation.
Naturally, this does not have the best effect on the course of the disease, the possibility of a happy cure is becoming less and less. Metastatic symptoms present.
Malignant cells metastasize from regional organs affected by oncology. These organs include the thyroid gland, the tops of the kidneys, lungs and mammary glands in women.
With the defeat of blood cancer, melanomas and lymphomas, these consequences for the heart muscle are possible. The tumor of the heart develops rapidly, after which the pericardium joins this, representingheart shell.
Characterized by the following symptoms:
- severely short of breath;
- inflammation of the pericardium in an acute form;
- arrhythmic events;
- dramatically enlarged heart on x-ray;
- systole murmurs.
Symptomatics and x-rays are not all diagnostic methods that are used to detect heart cancer. Computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging of the heart muscle are also used. Echocardiogram readings are optional.
Most often, time is missed and an already serious stage of cardiac sarcoma is diagnosed with metastases to nearby organs, mainly the lungs and brain.
What is the treatment for a heart tumor?
Therapy Methods
In medical statistics there is no information about the practical cure for a malignant tumor of the heart. Only palliative therapy remains.
Due to the complete damage to the organ and the developing process of metastasis, surgery is excluded. Patients are prescribed chemotherapy and radiation, which will somewhat alleviate the patient's condition. There are also operations for tumors of the heart.
Treatment will have results if preventive measures are taken, doctors are consulted in 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 brought into the body from the outside, but theyare actively formed from their own cells and have a huge aggressive force of an aggressive attack on he althy cells. Immune cells receive information about foreign structures that is in transfer factors.
If these cells are few, the immune structures will not have enough information about the danger. And the new cells of the immune system do not know what to do and what to protect against.
Surgical treatment
How is surgery performed to remove a heart tumor? Before non-invasive cardiac imaging was developed, valvular disease was considered an indication for surgery. Since the diagnosis was not informative.
Now, thanks to ultrasound, not a single patient with a mass in the heart has been operated on without imaging. CT and MRI provide data on tissue characteristics and the spread of infiltration.
Mesial sternotomy is a typical approach to benign tumors. At the same time, extracorporeal circulation with two-cavity drainage is connected. Calm manipulations are recommended for cardiac surgery due to the fact that most intracavitary cardiac tumors are fragile. Intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography is used, which allows you to determine what localization the tumor has, open the cavities of the heart, direct the cannula, and monitor the integrity of the tumor during surgery. A wide surgical approach is an indispensable condition for resection with one block of the tumor. The aspirated blood surrounding the tumor does not return to the extracorporeal circulation. This is necessary to preventpossible dissemination of malignant cells.
Forecast
The prognosis of the disease depends on the type of cells and the extent to which the operation was performed:
- The life expectancy of cancer patients is on average from two to seven years (this is influenced by the rate of metastasis of the body and the location of new metastases).
- The prognosis is influenced by donor-recipient compatibility during implantation or implantation of a donor heart. If 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 you follow the regular intake of supportive medications and medical recommendations.
If the treatment is symptomatic, then the patient will live from seven months to two years.
Unfortunately, cardiac tumors are diagnosed late, when there are already serious disorders in the organ. But even if a person has been diagnosed with heart cancer, then you should not give in to despair. Survival statistics are approximate, and patients with strict adherence to medical recommendations after removal of a heart tumor can live longer than the years indicated in the prognosis.
