Who gets heart cancer?

Over the last quarter of a century, I’ve written about a lot of different aspects of science and medical research. Cancer features a lot, the Big C is prominent in human misery and more common than many other diseases. Often I’ll use a phrase such as “treating liver, bowel, lung, breast, prostate and other cancers”. One phrase I don’t think I’ve ever written, until today is “heart cancer”. Heart cancer? Do people even get heart cancer? Almost every other organ from skin to brain from gonads to liver, from head and neck to bone and blood, there’s a cancer. Experts repeatedly explain that cancer isn’t a single disease (well it is really, it’s always just runaway cell division of a specific tissue). But, it occurred to me that one of those tissues, cardiac tissue, is rarely mentioned. I then wondered whether or not the lack of malignant tumours in this vital organ might offer clues as to why other organs develop cancers. If there’s some sort of cardioprotection might that be exploited in preventative measures or treatment of cancers elsewhere in the body. The Mayo Clinic website, always a trustworthy medical resource has this to say about heart cancer in its FAQ: Cancerous (malignant) tumors that begin in the heart are most often sarcomas, a type of cancer that originates in the soft tissues of the body. The vast majority of heart tumors are noncancerous (benign). Indeed a study of autopsies on 12000 cadav...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science Source Type: blogs