Cancerous heart tumors

[Sarah]

Cancer can develop in the heart or, more commonly, spread to the heart from another organ.

People may feel short of breath or faint, or they may have fever or weight loss or develop heart failure or abnormal heart rhythms.
Doctors use imaging studies to confirm a heart tumor.
Surgery is not helpful, but chemotherapy and sometimes radiation therapy may be useful.

Only a few cancers develop in the heart (see also Overview of Heart Tumors). Those that develop in the heart are called primary heart tumors. The most common primary cancerous heart tumors are sarcomas that develop from connective tissue.
Most cancerous heart tumors originate in some other part of the body—usually the lungs, breasts, kidneys, blood, or skin—and then spread (metastasize) to the heart. Metastatic heart tumors are 30 to 40 times more common than primary heart tumors but are still uncommon.
Cancers in the chest, such as lung or breast cancer, may spread to the heart by direct invasion, often into the sac that surrounds the heart (pericardium). Cancers may also spread to heart muscle and chambers through the bloodstream or through the lymph system.