Why is it that every single organ and component of the human body gets cancer except the heart? I have heard about cancer of everything from the brain to the blood; it seems no appendage is safe from the ravages of the big C. Yet I have never heard of anyone getting heart cancer. Am I merely medically ignorant or does the big love muscle have a secret weapon? –Peter Scott, Burbank, California
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We’ll get to the big love muscle next week, Peter. For now let’s stick to the heart. Cardiac tumors are rare, but they do occur, usually when cancer spreads from some other part of the body. These so-called metastatic tumors are 20 to 40 times more common than primary tumors–that is, cancers that start in the heart. Of the handful of primary tumors, two-thirds, such as your myxomas and rhabdomyomas, are benign, at least in the sense that they won’t spread and destroy the heart all by themselves. They can block blood flow, however, or cause arrhythmias or other abnormalities, so when a tumor is discovered the standard procedure is to cut the thing out, benign or not.
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