Many of us would have been familiar with issues like heart blockage, heart attack, heart failure etc

How many really know what heart cancer is?

In some people, the heart would have cancerous cells. This is known as heart cancer or heart tumour or cardiac tumour etc. Fact is that though the heart is the most important organ for our lives it is also highly susceptible to many health risks because of certain lifestyle habits.

It is learnt that cardiac tumour or heart cancer is one of the rare and damaging conditions that could occur in the heart.  One out of every 2000 autopsies would have cardiac humour in them and this was according to ESC or European Society of Cardiology.

The types of heart tumours are primary tumour or rare form and secondary tumour or most commonly occurring form.

Symptoms:

Persons with heart cancer would show important symptoms such as chest pain, irregular heartbeat, fatigue, feeling weak, shortness of breath etc. Information gathered is that the symptoms could vary based on the size, type and location of the tumour.

Risk factors:

There are few risk factors associated with heart cancer and these are age, genetics, exposed to certain environment factors etc. Heart cancer would also depend on other factors like smoking, alcohol consumption, poor diet, physical inactivity etc.

Diagnosis:

Point to be noted is that heart cancer is rare and it would have symptoms similar to heart conditions. Therefore, it would not be easy to diagnose heat cancer. Echocardiograms would be able to diagnose heart cancer in us. With the help of CT scan, it would be possible to differentiate between benign and malignant tumours.

Treatment of heart cancer:

One important treatment is surgical removal of a tumor from the heart. The tumour could be shrunk through radiation therapy. It would be possible to use chemotherapy to target the cancerous cells and prevent it from spreading. It is noteworthy that in some conditions heart transplant will also be considered for the patients with heart cancer. Complete cure for heart cancer might not be possible but benign heart cancer can be cured.