Two women with a heart tumor have undergone surgical treatment at the UMBAL “Prof. Dr. Alexander Chirkov” since the beginning of the year, the medical facility reports.
Last year, four patients with the same diagnosis were operated on by the hospital’s cardiac surgeons – two men and two women. The average age of those affected is between 43-65 years, but mainly the hospital’s patients are between 40-50 years old.
The practice at UMBAL “Prof. Dr. Alexander Chirkov” shows that less than 10 cases are operated on annually. Tumors of the heart are not common, are very rarely malignant and almost never recur. It is extremely important to react quickly and operate urgently when a heart tumor is detected.
In most patients, heart tumors are discovered accidentally, most often during a preventive examination. With echocardiography, the tumor can be successfully diagnosed. Specialists assure that metastases in the heart are extremely rare. In addition, tumor formations are very rarely found in the heart. The etiology of cardiac tumors is still unclear.
There are several types of heart tumors. The first type can be congenital conditions, and these are most often cysts – pericardial or heart cysts, which are benign, are removed and there is no problem for the patient afterwards.
The second type can be infectious, such as a canine tapeworm that burrows right into the heart muscle and causes a huge cyst, destroying a large part of it. There is also a group of benign tumors – myxomas.
These are the most frequently operated tumors of cardiac origin. But sometimes these myxomas can degenerate into a malignant entity. The last group of tumor diseases originate in the abdomen – liver, kidneys, etc., which grow and reach the heart along the course of the inferior vena cava.
Doctors advise to regularly conduct preventive examinations, because these tumors “grow” for months and even years.
