What Are the Treatments for Heart Cancer?

Although most health concerns regarding the heart center around heart disease and the risk of heart attacks, cancerous and noncancerous tumors can also occur in the heart. These tumors are very rare, and occur at a rate of approximately one out of every 2,000 people, according to the Merck Manuals Online Medical Library.

Types of Heart Cancer

• Heart cancer that originates in the heart is called a primary tumor. Heart cancer can also metastasize, or spread to the heart from other parts of the body.

Surgery

• Although surgery is used in many cases of cancer in an attempt to completely remove the cancer before it spreads, this is difficult to do in the heart because of its vital importance to the functioning of the entire body.

Chemotherapy

• Another treatment option for heart cancer is chemotherapy, which is the use of drugs that attack the cancer.

Radiation Therapy

• Radiation therapy can be used to treat heart cancer. This involves targeting the cancerous tumor with radiation. The radiation can be use externally with a device that aims the radiation at the tumor, or internally, where the radiation agent is introduced internally into the body at the location of the cancer.

Heart Cancer Incidence

• Heart cancer is so rare that the Surveillance Epidemeiology and End Results (SEER) database maintained by the National Cancer Institute doesn't even maintain separate statistics on deaths and diagnosed cases of heart cancer. Incidences of heart cancer are included in the category of "cancer of soft tissue and heart."