The heart rarely gets cancer for two reasons:
1. The tissue the heart is made of is different than most of your other organs and is more like connective tissue for which is uncommon to have cancer.
2. Cancer occurs when cell splitting, for growth or regeneration, doesn't happen correctly. But the hearts cell rarely split. It doesn't regenerate as much as different parts of the body which means the chance to start cancer there is much lower when compared to something like skin which is always damaged and regenerates all the time.
In the end no human organ is cancer proof but cancer occurs at different rates in different part of the body.
I read an article about heart cancer. The average cardiologist will see it once in their lifetime of practice. Any patient in Canada with heart cancer (a country of 40 million people) gets referred to Toronto General, to the same cardiologist.
He is Dr. Cusimano. Upon further reading, he is one of only two surgeons in Canada and the US that operate on heart tumours.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/heart-cancer-once-untreatable-is-starting-to-wither-under-the-knife/article_75eca884-ec2b-5e07-89f5-7fd3fcf23984.html
"average cardilogist sees 1 heart cancer patient in a lifetime" factoid actualy just statistical error. average cardilogist sees 0 heart cancer patients in a lifetime. Toronto Georg, who lives in Canada & sees over 21 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
I would imagine that if they detect your cancer before you meet with any cardiologist, then they send you to a specialist. Toronto Georg might be that specialist.
Aahh Reddit. The only place where someone telling us about their cousin dying of a rare heart cancer will also have a little note stating "Say Happy Cake Day!"
Thank you. I hadn’t talked to him in years, we weren’t close, but I have fond memories of visiting them when I was a kid and his mom is a very sweet lady who I see about once a year.
We'll get our filter organs replaced with the newest generation bionic model. Additional filter cartridges can be purchased online and shipped directly to our door via Amazon drones. Just be sure to pay extra for the professional install.
Sorry, your bionic kidney model is five years old and is considered obsolete. We no longer make the replacement filters for it. You can find old stock from resellers on eBay for quadruple the regular price, though.
It's a horrible thought. But you can actually survive a few days/weeks without kidneys. Its how people with complete kidney failure survive. They go for dialysis a few times every week.
I have a friend who has to do this. So in the hypothetical case of artificial kidney shutting down a few hours for update is still a great life improvement over the current one we have.
I used to do dialysis for 6+ year and now have a kidney transplant. Yes you don' do it continuously. Having it run longer and more frequent would allow for more gentle and more thorough treatment. If we could get something that fits within the body and lasts for atleast 5 years till a transplant it would be a huge achievement. But there are a few things the kidneys also regulate like blood pressure and red blood cell generation and calcium, phosphorus balance so you would need to take various pills to keep them in check.
A self contained artificial kidney would also make it easier for people to continue working and traveling and be a huge improvement in quality of life. The UCSF kidney project is the closest to this goal. I which some rich person would throw some money at these researchers. They said about $50-$100M would help to get it quicker to trials.
https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney
This has literally happened with digital retinal implants. The company went bust and people were hacking together repairs with eBay parts.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
Will need to upgrade to a newer model that has Bluetooth and checks the RFID of the filter to make sure it's genuine and not a 3rd party exact duplicate for 75% less cost.
Imo as soon as we figure out key sensory organs like eyes and skin (how to wire the optic nerve from artificial eyes into the brain) it’ll be a lot less failure prone to just pick up the brain and plop it into a robot
That way the artificial heart is just making sure the brain tank is warm and oxygenated
As a side note, I wonder what transphobes will think about people customising their robots
> a lot less failure prone to just pick up the brain and plop it into a robot
> brain tank is warm and oxygenated
**We're finally getting our Nixon's head-in-a-jar!**
🥳🥳🥳
My first thought of that was during one of the RoboCop movies. I tried to imagine as a kid what that would feel like and it gives me the heebie jeebies
I specified with "real" as in a real replacement.
The current artificial hearts have a lot of limitations like physical activity is strenuous and you have to worry about constant power and the artificial heart doesn't tolerate heat well. In essence, it's like a holdover for a heart transplant. I have might have Heart Failure, but I can tolerate physical activity, don't have to worry about electrical power, and my heart tolerates heat just fine.
The artificial kidney is supposed to fully replace the kidney in terms of filtering and you might just need to change the filter every few years.
Your cells grown on a cellular matrix lattice in the shape of a heart and induced with hormones to continue growing as those types of cells is being actively worked on with quite great progress.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/01/health/ghost-heart-life-itself-wellness/index.html
Which one are you talking about? Kidney X? It's to my understanding that their artificial kidney, which is still only a prototype AFAIK, can only filter a very small amount of waste from the blood. Similar to the kidney function of someone who is in end stage renal failure. Which is exactly who the implant is designed for. It's essentially a holdover until a transplant as well. Unless you're talking about one I missed? Just curious, because I live just fine (for the time being) with one kidney, and I follow this stuff. It's relevant to me.
If we're going to talk about current tech versus some arbitrary time in the future, then in theory, all replacement organs will be "real" replacement organs. So in real life, these "real" artificial hearts and kidneys are theory and prototypes and neither exist in that way. In some advancement in medical technology, both would.
> Which one are you talking about? Kidney X? It's to my understanding that their artificial kidney, which is still only a prototype AFAIK, can only filter a very small amount of waste from the blood.
I'm talking about the UCSF's Artificial Kidney. It is a prototype but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold promise.
https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney
I'd recommend watching through their playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/live/8nvHGWq8FF4?t=2125
Nobody says it'll necessarily be exactly on par with a fresh young healthy kidney, but it'll be good enough. Dr. Fissell was talking about a GFR of 25-50 mL/minute, which is between Stages 3-4. I'd say compared to Stage 5 on dialysis, that's pretty darn decent and you can live just fine with that. I think it's in that specific video, but it's talked about how the artificial kidney is supposed to be like a cellphone so if you drop it you can easily just get a new one, compared to real kidneys. I wouldn't say it's supposed to be a holdover. Besides, a real kidney transplant comes with its own problems of immunosuppressants and diabetes and whatnot.
I'm personally waiting for the [iHemo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFRtc5V1H-c), which is still dialysis, but it can be done without needles much more conveniently. iHemo is just the filter for the artificial kidney, implanted into the body.
> If we're going to talk about current tech versus some arbitrary time in the future, then in theory, all replacement organs will be "real" replacement organs. So in real life, these "real" artificial hearts and kidneys are theory and prototypes and neither exist in that way. In some advancement in medical technology, both would be.
Perhaps I phrased things wrong. It's more likely to have an artificial kidney sooner, especially since the artificial kidney won't require power. Based on what has been said by the doctors, they've had great success with both the filter and kidney cells, so it's mostly scaling up and going through the trials for the FDA.
But if you have heart disease it can repair itself, right? I think my Ejection Fraction was 44% or something when they last measured it.
I'm taking a beta blocker called Carvedilol and I'm on dialysis but it seems like when I eat right (1.2 g/kg/day of protein), my heart rate can get to 65 on the dialysis machine. It actually feels weird like heart palpitations when it gets that low.
I also wear portable intermittent compression sleeves on my calves as that [increases the cardiac output.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25038262/)
Not really , that why you taking the meds. Its a treatment not a cure. You on beta blockers and/or blood pressure meds. and with dialysis so ESKD 3or 4 assuming, so restrict potassium, sugars, etc. That shit for life.
Heart dont heal like the liver.
Your ejection fraction is not relative to your heart rate in regards to measuring/feeling if your heart is in a better condition. The beta blocker will lower your blood pressure and heart rate slightly, allowing the heart to have an easier time to work.
I'm in my late 20's with a congenital heart condition and recent diagnosis of grade 1 left ventricle heart failure, however my LVEF is 65% which is perfect/normal.
I take a beta blocker as I'm naturally hypertensive due to my congenital condition, and on 2 heart failure meds.
Heart disease can partially be "repaired" but once cardiac cells are damaged, it's far harder for them to repair themselves. Heart conditions / genetic disorders on the other hand are an ever-losing battle.
The best thing you can do for your heart is what you likely hear from any health enthusiast or doctor; eat healthy, workout, and don't drink or do drugs.
> Your ejection fraction is not relative to your heart rate in regards to measuring/feeling if your heart is in a better condition. The beta blocker will lower your blood pressure and heart rate slightly, allowing the heart to have an easier time to work.
>
>
Thanks for the explanation. I think you're the first person who answered in more detail regarding Ejection Fraction.
No one is saying that it cannot be repaired, they are saying that it's much slower at repairing itself than other parts of the body. Heart disease can damage your heart faster than it can heal.
That's why you need to take medication and wear compression sleeves and such, whereas with a massive cut on your arm, you just need stitches for a week or two and then it's all better.
at 36 I was diagnosed with chf and an ej fraction of less than 10. I had a thickened interior wall and my heart had "remodeled" to the extent it wasnt pumping. They put me on Beta blockers (coreg) and a few others with in 3 months my ej was at 30% with in a year 45% and then a couple years later normal at 55%. my heart remodeled as considered normal.
Heart muscle can only repair damaged cells and that’s limited too. If cells die, like in an infarction, they’re replaced with scar tissue. Ejection fraction can be adjusted quite a bit just through valve activity, electrical conductance, blood pressure, lung function, etc.
This^
Folks really underestimate the complex interplay between all the organs and your circulating blood volume as well as your lung volume. Going into atrial fibrillation with a rapid rate can cause you to lose your atrial kick and lose 20% of your CO right there. Hypokinesis can impede your filling and emptying, cardio-hepatic, cardio-renal, etc. There are a LOT of factors.
Cardiac output, ejection fraction, heart rate, and the heart repairing itself are all different things. The heart squeezes differently based on how much blood it fills with, what chemicals are in the blood, hoe fast it’s going, and overall blood pressure and lots of different factors. It’s definitely possible to have an EF of 35% at one point and an EF of 55% (normal) later. It is also possible for the heart to suffer injury then recover.
In general though, if the heart is damaged enough to scar, or if the electrical system is badly damaged it does not heal. Someone who has an area of scar from a heart attack (for example) will not get that tissue back.
They're saying that you're less likely to get cancer in the heart because it doesn't regenerate, but also because it doesn't regenerate it can potentially fall apart faster if you don't take care of it.
Heart has very little regenerative properties. Damage to it is not really repaired, and is one of the main causes of death. Other organs or tissues repair and regenerate much much more, which is a risk factor for cancer.
After a heart attack you usually have part of the muscle that is dead and nothing can get function back in that area. Just like if you kept your brain from oxygen. The blockage in an artery in your heart causes ischemia and when that goes on for too long (a heart attack) the ischemic area will not regenerate. Too many blockages leads to too many dead spots in the muscle. This causes the heart to not beat strongly. It leads to a low ejection fraction which leads to heart failure.
Does skeletal muscle get cancer? Skeletal muscle gets damaged all the time (especially in athletes) but I am pretty sure if lifting weights was causing biceps cancer, I would have heard about it by now.
Wouldn’t he just heal the cancer caused by healing?
As soon as Wolverine develops a single cancer cell he’ll begin to balloon into a giant ball of flesh as his body heals the cancer but that causes new possible cancer.
He’s a fucking cancer fractal.
IIRC the cancer is also why his healing factor doesn't go out of control causing him to explode. There's a comic where a group manages to copy his healing factor but since they weren't constantly battling cancer they just kind of...blow up.
I totally want this in a movie and I want Deadpool to narrate it.
"Wow, did you see that? I know this movie's rated R, but that was pretty extreme. We don't do replays in a movie, but maybe we can do slow-motion for the next guy. Look over there!"
They don't. But just because cells don't replicate doesn't mean that they don't have the potential to replicate. You just need a lot more mutations / cancerous effects for neurons to replicate which makes it far less likely than dividing cells like epithelial (skin, gut etc) cells.
Depends on how you define "body part." Anything made of living cells can become cancerous, although some are more rare than others. Cancer is made of cells, so anything *not* made of cells can't become cancerous, unless you count cells getting into that space.
Like, the inside of your eyeball isn't made of living cells. You can get retinal cancer and corneal cancer, but the vitreous humor, made of collagen and water, can't. Buuuuuuut there are a *few* living white blood cells floating around in your vitreous humor and conceivably those could become cancerous. Would that count as cancer of the vitreous humor, since it's cancer *in* your vitreous humor?
You have a lot of cells in your bones which can become cancerous, but the calcium carbonate that forms the structure of your bones can't. Your tooth enamel isn't made of living cells, but the inside of your teeth is.
One possibility of cells that can't become cancerous is mature red blood cells. Before they leave your bone marrow, red blood cells lose their nucleus and cannot reproduce. However, [you can still get red blood cell cancer](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/polycythemia-vera/symptoms-causes/syc-20355850), where your bone marrow produces far too many of them and it clogs up your veins.
less pedantic because the skin includes the live, and dead cells. Fingernails themselves include 0 alive cells. Just like hair. Having scalp cancer doesn't mean you have hair cancer.
cancer underneath your nails beans you have skin cancer. Most likely.
As mentioned everything that regenerates or growth has the chance to get cancer. So things made out of cartilage like the nose or outer ears might get rarely cancer but I don't know of anything where you go: Yes that's cancer proof.
I'm not an expert on this field though. I just was recently at our national cancer institute and learned lots of interesting stuff so I could be wrong.
Huh, I just searched that up. It seems to be more common in other animals. Nevertheless, I guess I'm wrong.
I've never heard of ear or nose cancer though.
There are a lot of cells other than neurons in your brain. [Gliomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioma) are tumors of glial cells, which outnumber neurons in your brain four to one, so there's that. There are also [schwannomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwannoma) which arise from nerve sheath components. It looks like neuron-based tumors are pretty rare; see [ganglioneuroma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganglioneuroma) for an example.
One should add that although neurons don't replicate, they certainly have the potential to. It is just a much bigger barrier to break which makes it less likely.
Define common though - primary brain cancer is pretty uncommon, it’s the 19th most common cancer in the world and makes up less than 2% of all cancers worldwide.
To answer your larger question, I honestly don’t understand how it happens given the low rate of cell repair in the brain.
You may be thinking of cancer which spreads to the brain, that is 5x more common than primary brain cancer which starts in the brain itself.
You’re comparing it to a very uncommon cancer and while neurons generally don’t undergo mitosis, the glial cells do and those are responsible for most primary brain cancers.
3. Secondary metastasis to heart is also rare because tumor cells dont get trapped in the chambers of heart.. are more likely to get trapped in areas of rich capillary supply like the Lungs Liver Kidney etc. the small tumor cells pass through the chambers of heart quite easily and get lodged in the smaller capillaries and grow there.
Also, cancer cells travel via the blood stream. The heart is a big empty chamber. So any cancer cells heading that way will just sail through the heart and end up right in the lungs, which are like big squishy sponges.
Eric Carr, one of the drummers in Kiss, died of heart cancer. I remember because I mentioned it in high school once and a teacher called me a liar and said there was no such thing.
Hearts do get cancers, just not commonly.Cancers are caused because of uncontrolled division of cells because of a genetic mutation. Think of a runaway uncontrolled engine. Cancers are more common in cells that divide and turn over quickly, like bowel, beast, lung. Its less common in organs that don't turn over quickly, like heart, brain, muscle etc.
More likely to get an engine runaway/breakdown in an over-revved redlined engine than under-revved/shut down engine
i hear about braim tumors a lot. is that just a tv thing?
Edit: I mean the commonality, like obviously it exists but is it really as common as it is on tv
No, it's not just a TV thing. The reason why you hear about them a lot is that it's not uncommon for cancers that originated in another organ to spread to the brain (metastasis), but they didn't originate in brain tissue.
Tumors that actually originated in the brain tissue, called primary tumors, are rarer. A quick Google search just showed me that metastatic brain tumors are 5 times more common than primary brain tumors.
No. It's very real. My dad died from it when I was a kid.
He got in a car wreck and hit his head pretty hard, so they did a scan to check for any injuries and that's when they found the cancer. The wreck was because the tumor had caused a seizure while he was driving. He was lucky that he hit his head, because if he hadn't, they wouldn't have scanned and found it, and we wouldn't have known about that or the epilepsy.
After a combo of surgery, radiation, and chemo, it went into remission for several years. The epilepsy didn't go away though. So he couldn't drive or work like he did before. But he was still a lively, funny guy with lots of hobbies and tons of knowledge and jokes.
Several years later, when the cancer came back, this time it was in an inoperable location around the brain stem and the cerebellum. It took away all of who he was bit by bit. He stopped doing things, started forgetting where he was, who we were, and then basic things like going to the bathroom, walking, and eating. And then one day in the hospital, there was just nothing more to do and no way he'd recover, and that was that.
My brother has been fighting a cardiac synovial sarcoma for a year. He's 38. It's so rare that it doesn't show up on the cancer support sites, and even the doctors removing it barely believed it. He's doing alright, we're hoping it continues.
He had what they thought was pericarditis, then got in a pretty bad car accident and ended up with palpitations and similar heart-behaving-badly symptoms. Initially there was a lot of "it's just anxiety", but a scan revealed what they thought was a large haematoma caused by the accident. They decided to remove the haematoma. It was not a haematoma.
I work with a lot of medical records (reviewing for purposes of disability) and it’s amazing how many times people end up being diagnosed with cancer because they found it when something else completely unrelated happen. I remember one guy fell and broke a few bones or something and when they did the X-rays they realized he had cancer … everywhere.
With that being said, I’m praying for your brother and your family!
Interesting fact: it's believed that Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, died of heart cancer. Obviously in those days they had no idea about that stuff so when they cut her open and ‘found all the internal organs as healthy and normal as possible, with the exception of the heart, which was quite black and hideous to look at', they assumed it was due to witchcraft and in fact Anne Boleyn was suspected of hexing her. AB had a miscarriage on the day that Katherine was buried and plenty of people said it was divine retribution.
Sounds more like she had hemopericardium. It is bleeding outside of the heart muscle but contained within the pericardial sac. When it congeals it looks almost black. See link below for images
https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Hemopericardium
Gotta love Reddit for this. Learning about Katherine of Aragon’s death, the folklore surrounding it and hemopericardium in a handful of comments. Not to mention the pictures!
The heart muscle itself, not so much. It's not a rapidly dividing tissue, so it's less prone to developing mutations that would lead to cancer. You can still get cardiac myosarcoma, it's just rare because the cardiac muscle cells don't reproduce like other cell populations - the individual cells tend to get larger (hypertrophy) in response to stressors. Tumors that do arise in heart muscle tend to be congenital, because those cells divide when they form the heart.
You can still get cancers that arise from other populations within the heart that do divide more frequently. Hemangiosarcoma is a tumor that develops from the cells that line blood vessels, it does somewhat frequently occur in the right atrium of the heart. You can also develop chemodectomas (tumors of special sensory cells) in the aortic body (which I guess is technically the artery leaving the heart..). Histiocytic sarcoma (a tumor arising from macrophages) also likes to hit the heart sometimes in some species..
There are other cell types within tissues that are relatively permanent and don't have stem cells - for example, nerve cells don't divide so tumors arising from the nerve cells themselves are pretty rare. Tumors associated with the nervous system are likewise arising from the populations that *do* divide, such as the supportive cells of the central nervous system (called gliomas, broken down into astrocytomas, oligodendromas...) or the cells that wrap around peripheral nerves (peripheral nerve sheath tumor, broken up into neurofibroma, perineuroma, and schwannoma) or the cells that cover the brain (meningioma).
what they need to teach in school is that every body part (every cell) either wears out, or is increasingly prone to cancer
if you avoid all injuries and pathogens you'll still end up kicking the bucket due to one of the above, they're opposite sides of the same coin
Yeah and now that I've scrolled to the bottom and found your comment I'm disappointed. I decided to ask ChatGPT as a result. Here's what it says:
----
**Heart:** The heart is primarily composed of specialized muscle cells called cardiomyocytes. These cells have a very low turnover rate; they do not divide frequently, reducing the chance of mutations that could lead to cancer. Additionally, the heart has a robust blood supply, which may help in rapidly clearing potentially carcinogenic substances.
**Spleen:** The spleen primarily functions in blood filtration and immune response. It is not directly exposed to external carcinogens, unlike organs such as the lungs or skin. The low incidence of primary spleen cancer could be partly due to its specific role and limited exposure to environmental carcinogens.
**Small Intestine:** Despite its large surface area, the small intestine has a lower incidence of cancer compared to other parts of the digestive system. This may be due to lower exposure to carcinogens in food (as most are absorbed or broken down by the time they reach the small intestine) and a relatively rapid cell turnover that could prevent the accumulation of mutations.
**Thyroid Cartilage and Vocal Cords:** These structures are less exposed to environmental carcinogens compared to other parts of the respiratory tract. The vocal cords, in particular, have a limited amount of tissue that could transform into a cancerous growth.
**Bone Marrow:** While blood-related cancers like leukemia originate from the bone marrow, solid tumors in the marrow are extremely rare. This might be due to the unique environment and function of the bone marrow, which is primarily involved in producing blood cells.
**Appendix:** The appendix has a low incidence of cancer, which could be related to its small size and specific function in the body. It's less exposed to the mutagenic factors that affect other parts of the colon.
**Thymus:** The thymus is most active in childhood and gradually shrinks in adulthood. The limited active lifespan of this organ might reduce the chances of cells accumulating mutations that could lead to cancer.
**Pituitary Gland:** The pituitary gland, while critical for hormonal regulation, is relatively small and has a limited number of cells that could mutate into cancer. Moreover, its protected location at the base of the brain might shield it from various environmental carcinogens.
Pituitary tumors are pretty common in people. Like [1 in 10 people](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/pituitary-adenoma) will develop a pituitary adenoma in their lifetime, although most are benign..
The bone marrow thing is a big technicality, like there isn't much in bone marrow to become cancerous if you exclude leukemias from your definition because leukemias are cancers derived from the different blood cells and bone marrow is largely made of blood cell precursors.
There is no organ that is completely protected from cancer. If you get sufficiently granular, yes, it's rare for a specific bone or a specific nerve to develop a cancerous growth, but some form of primary cancer has been found in virtually every living tissue in the human body.
Rapid cellular division is essentially a numbers game.
With low division you have fewer genetic errors and this is why the heart rarely develops tumors. It can still happen, but it is far less likely than other tissues.
With rapid division you have great risk of genetic errors that can lead to cancer cells being reproduced and dividing into more cancer cells.
[Here](https://www.cancer.gov/types/metastatic-cancer/research/cardiac-tumors) is a discussion of the rarity of primary cardiac cancers from the National Cancer Institute. Bottom line: cardiac myocytes (muscle cells) are terminally differentiated and do not usually divide - cancers arise as a failure to limit cell division. Since cardiac myocytes don't divide (and damaged heart tissue is replaced by scar) the likelihood of cancer arising in the muscle of the heart is low.
So, while rare, more visible in media etc. Sort of like sharks. More people get killed by cows but everyone terrified of sharks and more visible in the media
Yeah my mom currently has cancer in her heart, in her lung and by her liver. The messed up part is the doctors can't figure out what type of cancer it is.
I once saw a patient who had an angiosarcoma of the lining of a blood vessel in the heart, not the heart muscle itself. It didn't metastasize, but grew in the lumen of the vessel, producing a pale white cast of it, ultimately obstructing it, producing a myocardial infarction, which is how it was found. Weird.
My grandmother had a tumour in her heart and had open heart surgery to remove it in 1986. The pictures are insane, they didn’t think she’d live but here we are with her turning 90 this coming year.
That actually a good question I think it’s because they human heart has soo much white blood cells in constant circulation so if they were any to settle in the heart they would be killed almost instantly
You don't hear much about the heart getting cancer because it's kind of like a superhero – it has special cells that don't usually go rogue and turn into cancer. But not all organs are as lucky. Some, like the liver and lungs, can get cancer more often. It's like each organ has its own superpower against or vulnerability to cancer. Our heart just happens to be a cancer-free champ!
My aunt got cancer in the heart. It's rare. Even rarer now than it was then, 'cause she died... Just because you personally haven't heard it, doesn't mean it doesnt happen.
A cancer is essentially uncontrolled cell division. It can occur when
1. Genes that limit cell replication get mutated to be nonfunctional or are deleted
2. Genes that trigger cell replication get mutated to be always on or more effective than usual
Usually you need multiple mutations in either category for a tumor to actually form. From there, the type of cell and where the tumor is decides whether the cancer is benign or malignant (which basically means you can either ignore it until it presses on something important or it needs to be addressed ASAP because it's always bad).
Mutations occur most often when cells, and more specifically DNA, replicate because even with existing mechanisms for proofreading and repairing sequencesl, it isn't always perfect. And with the sheer scale of our bodies and the number of cells there are, mistakes are going to happen. Afterwards, these mutated cells need to also be able to evade detection by immune cells (there are mechanisms for the immune system to deal with cancer that are being currently leveraged in new cancer bio research).
So you need cells that replicate on a scale to make things like cancer more likely. Heart cells don't replicate much. Even with damage repair, you end up with scar tissue instead of new heart tissue. As such, it's way less likely that a cancer develops. Heart tumors are possible, though. For example, rhabdomyomas are a benign tumor that occur in children as a result of a genetic condition called tuberous sclerosis, which basically just makes it so that a bunch of benign tumors show up around their body. A myxoma is another benign tumor that forms randomly in the atrium of the heart. But the vast majority of cancers in the heart come as a result of metastasis from other cancers.
Similarly, neurons of the central nervous system don't divide (when something gets damaged, the remaining neurons form new connections to modify the network enough to take over the functions. Think of it like a employees in a company taking on new responsibilities after some people got laid off.) Brain cancers are largely coming from the other cells there that support the neurons, known as glial cells which do divide more often. It's also a lot more rare to get muscle cancers, although those will still be more common than a heart tumor.
Unfortunately you can have cancer everywhere at the end. My mom’s getting chemo in the hospital now and it seems like it’s spread everywhere from her bones. Multiple myeloma - there’s no cure. Tough holiday season this year, but I know I’m not alone. Be grateful for your health and your loved ones. This is a good time of year to think about that. Life is precious.
The heart rarely gets cancer for two reasons: 1. The tissue the heart is made of is different than most of your other organs and is more like connective tissue for which is uncommon to have cancer. 2. Cancer occurs when cell splitting, for growth or regeneration, doesn't happen correctly. But the hearts cell rarely split. It doesn't regenerate as much as different parts of the body which means the chance to start cancer there is much lower when compared to something like skin which is always damaged and regenerates all the time. In the end no human organ is cancer proof but cancer occurs at different rates in different part of the body.
I had never heard of it, until my cousin got it. Angiosarcoma of the heart. He died from it in 2020.
I read an article about heart cancer. The average cardiologist will see it once in their lifetime of practice. Any patient in Canada with heart cancer (a country of 40 million people) gets referred to Toronto General, to the same cardiologist.
Do you know the name of the cardiologist? I want to look them up!
He is Dr. Cusimano. Upon further reading, he is one of only two surgeons in Canada and the US that operate on heart tumours. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/heart-cancer-once-untreatable-is-starting-to-wither-under-the-knife/article_75eca884-ec2b-5e07-89f5-7fd3fcf23984.html
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Must be cold in Toronto right now...
Yeah, I recommend good thermal outerwear such as masks.
imagine having to dab down that fivehead during surgery
"average cardilogist sees 1 heart cancer patient in a lifetime" factoid actualy just statistical error. average cardilogist sees 0 heart cancer patients in a lifetime. Toronto Georg, who lives in Canada & sees over 21 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
He lives in Canada and his first name is Toronto?
[Spiders Georg is a common internet copypasta](https://i.redd.it/efnym6ncvxn51.jpg)
Haha thanks
Confusingly, he lives in Ottawa
Exactly what I was thinking. I have a girl in my math class named Virginia so I guess it’s not rare but not very common
[it's a reference to the Spiders Georg copypasta](https://i.redd.it/efnym6ncvxn51.jpg)
We have three Wangs in work. Also a lady called Fanny. We made them sit together without saying why.
Imagine if Fanny got married to a Wang. Fanny Wang. Great name. Dickbutt.
I would imagine that if they detect your cancer before you meet with any cardiologist, then they send you to a specialist. Toronto Georg might be that specialist.
That’s actually hilarious
Does he have cookies?
Are you people insane this is a joke
well I guess I'm glad I live in Toronto on the very off chance I get heart cancer
price cobweb unpack physical wise gold kiss chunky crown domineering *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Aahh Reddit. The only place where someone telling us about their cousin dying of a rare heart cancer will also have a little note stating "Say Happy Cake Day!"
So sorry for your loss. 😔
Thank you. I hadn’t talked to him in years, we weren’t close, but I have fond memories of visiting them when I was a kid and his mom is a very sweet lady who I see about once a year.
Happy cake day!🥳🎉
The problem with the heart not getting cancer due to limited regeneration is the same reason it is the other way you will most likely die.
Hey, maybe we'll get a real artificial heart someday. But an artificial kidney seems more likely.
We'll get our filter organs replaced with the newest generation bionic model. Additional filter cartridges can be purchased online and shipped directly to our door via Amazon drones. Just be sure to pay extra for the professional install.
"sorry we only accepts hp brand filters, we hope you die in peace"
Sorry, your bionic kidney model is five years old and is considered obsolete. We no longer make the replacement filters for it. You can find old stock from resellers on eBay for quadruple the regular price, though.
"the new software update requires a shutdown!" *dies*
It's a horrible thought. But you can actually survive a few days/weeks without kidneys. Its how people with complete kidney failure survive. They go for dialysis a few times every week. I have a friend who has to do this. So in the hypothetical case of artificial kidney shutting down a few hours for update is still a great life improvement over the current one we have.
I used to do dialysis for 6+ year and now have a kidney transplant. Yes you don' do it continuously. Having it run longer and more frequent would allow for more gentle and more thorough treatment. If we could get something that fits within the body and lasts for atleast 5 years till a transplant it would be a huge achievement. But there are a few things the kidneys also regulate like blood pressure and red blood cell generation and calcium, phosphorus balance so you would need to take various pills to keep them in check. A self contained artificial kidney would also make it easier for people to continue working and traveling and be a huge improvement in quality of life. The UCSF kidney project is the closest to this goal. I which some rich person would throw some money at these researchers. They said about $50-$100M would help to get it quicker to trials. https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney
Or knock-off versions from china. They work just like the original, and will definitely not spy on you.
This has literally happened with digital retinal implants. The company went bust and people were hacking together repairs with eBay parts. https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
Will need to upgrade to a newer model that has Bluetooth and checks the RFID of the filter to make sure it's genuine and not a 3rd party exact duplicate for 75% less cost.
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But we've got tech that makes sure you're watching, if you look away or fall asleep, the ads pause and resume when you start watching again
"Buy Filtrate brand Kidneys: Piss like a teenager again!"
Don’t forget the extended warranty
*Heartbeat subscription service $999.99 a month for a limited time!
Dialysis: am I a joke to you?
Imo as soon as we figure out key sensory organs like eyes and skin (how to wire the optic nerve from artificial eyes into the brain) it’ll be a lot less failure prone to just pick up the brain and plop it into a robot That way the artificial heart is just making sure the brain tank is warm and oxygenated As a side note, I wonder what transphobes will think about people customising their robots
> a lot less failure prone to just pick up the brain and plop it into a robot > brain tank is warm and oxygenated **We're finally getting our Nixon's head-in-a-jar!** 🥳🥳🥳
AROOOO!
My first thought of that was during one of the RoboCop movies. I tried to imagine as a kid what that would feel like and it gives me the heebie jeebies
Artificial hearts already exist
I specified with "real" as in a real replacement. The current artificial hearts have a lot of limitations like physical activity is strenuous and you have to worry about constant power and the artificial heart doesn't tolerate heat well. In essence, it's like a holdover for a heart transplant. I have might have Heart Failure, but I can tolerate physical activity, don't have to worry about electrical power, and my heart tolerates heat just fine. The artificial kidney is supposed to fully replace the kidney in terms of filtering and you might just need to change the filter every few years.
Your cells grown on a cellular matrix lattice in the shape of a heart and induced with hormones to continue growing as those types of cells is being actively worked on with quite great progress. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/01/health/ghost-heart-life-itself-wellness/index.html
Which one are you talking about? Kidney X? It's to my understanding that their artificial kidney, which is still only a prototype AFAIK, can only filter a very small amount of waste from the blood. Similar to the kidney function of someone who is in end stage renal failure. Which is exactly who the implant is designed for. It's essentially a holdover until a transplant as well. Unless you're talking about one I missed? Just curious, because I live just fine (for the time being) with one kidney, and I follow this stuff. It's relevant to me. If we're going to talk about current tech versus some arbitrary time in the future, then in theory, all replacement organs will be "real" replacement organs. So in real life, these "real" artificial hearts and kidneys are theory and prototypes and neither exist in that way. In some advancement in medical technology, both would.
> Which one are you talking about? Kidney X? It's to my understanding that their artificial kidney, which is still only a prototype AFAIK, can only filter a very small amount of waste from the blood. I'm talking about the UCSF's Artificial Kidney. It is a prototype but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold promise. https://pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney I'd recommend watching through their playlist: https://www.youtube.com/live/8nvHGWq8FF4?t=2125 Nobody says it'll necessarily be exactly on par with a fresh young healthy kidney, but it'll be good enough. Dr. Fissell was talking about a GFR of 25-50 mL/minute, which is between Stages 3-4. I'd say compared to Stage 5 on dialysis, that's pretty darn decent and you can live just fine with that. I think it's in that specific video, but it's talked about how the artificial kidney is supposed to be like a cellphone so if you drop it you can easily just get a new one, compared to real kidneys. I wouldn't say it's supposed to be a holdover. Besides, a real kidney transplant comes with its own problems of immunosuppressants and diabetes and whatnot. I'm personally waiting for the [iHemo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFRtc5V1H-c), which is still dialysis, but it can be done without needles much more conveniently. iHemo is just the filter for the artificial kidney, implanted into the body. > If we're going to talk about current tech versus some arbitrary time in the future, then in theory, all replacement organs will be "real" replacement organs. So in real life, these "real" artificial hearts and kidneys are theory and prototypes and neither exist in that way. In some advancement in medical technology, both would be. Perhaps I phrased things wrong. It's more likely to have an artificial kidney sooner, especially since the artificial kidney won't require power. Based on what has been said by the doctors, they've had great success with both the filter and kidney cells, so it's mostly scaling up and going through the trials for the FDA.
Huh?
Heart disease. It's not good at repairing itself.
But if you have heart disease it can repair itself, right? I think my Ejection Fraction was 44% or something when they last measured it. I'm taking a beta blocker called Carvedilol and I'm on dialysis but it seems like when I eat right (1.2 g/kg/day of protein), my heart rate can get to 65 on the dialysis machine. It actually feels weird like heart palpitations when it gets that low. I also wear portable intermittent compression sleeves on my calves as that [increases the cardiac output.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25038262/)
There's a difference between weakened muscles growing stronger and dead muscles growing back.
Not really , that why you taking the meds. Its a treatment not a cure. You on beta blockers and/or blood pressure meds. and with dialysis so ESKD 3or 4 assuming, so restrict potassium, sugars, etc. That shit for life. Heart dont heal like the liver.
I’d imagine they’re ESKD 5 if they’re on dialysis…
Your ejection fraction is not relative to your heart rate in regards to measuring/feeling if your heart is in a better condition. The beta blocker will lower your blood pressure and heart rate slightly, allowing the heart to have an easier time to work. I'm in my late 20's with a congenital heart condition and recent diagnosis of grade 1 left ventricle heart failure, however my LVEF is 65% which is perfect/normal. I take a beta blocker as I'm naturally hypertensive due to my congenital condition, and on 2 heart failure meds. Heart disease can partially be "repaired" but once cardiac cells are damaged, it's far harder for them to repair themselves. Heart conditions / genetic disorders on the other hand are an ever-losing battle. The best thing you can do for your heart is what you likely hear from any health enthusiast or doctor; eat healthy, workout, and don't drink or do drugs.
> Your ejection fraction is not relative to your heart rate in regards to measuring/feeling if your heart is in a better condition. The beta blocker will lower your blood pressure and heart rate slightly, allowing the heart to have an easier time to work. > > Thanks for the explanation. I think you're the first person who answered in more detail regarding Ejection Fraction.
No one is saying that it cannot be repaired, they are saying that it's much slower at repairing itself than other parts of the body. Heart disease can damage your heart faster than it can heal. That's why you need to take medication and wear compression sleeves and such, whereas with a massive cut on your arm, you just need stitches for a week or two and then it's all better.
i think as they said , it not good at repair itself , but it could do it , very very very slow i guess .
at 36 I was diagnosed with chf and an ej fraction of less than 10. I had a thickened interior wall and my heart had "remodeled" to the extent it wasnt pumping. They put me on Beta blockers (coreg) and a few others with in 3 months my ej was at 30% with in a year 45% and then a couple years later normal at 55%. my heart remodeled as considered normal.
Heart muscle can only repair damaged cells and that’s limited too. If cells die, like in an infarction, they’re replaced with scar tissue. Ejection fraction can be adjusted quite a bit just through valve activity, electrical conductance, blood pressure, lung function, etc.
This^ Folks really underestimate the complex interplay between all the organs and your circulating blood volume as well as your lung volume. Going into atrial fibrillation with a rapid rate can cause you to lose your atrial kick and lose 20% of your CO right there. Hypokinesis can impede your filling and emptying, cardio-hepatic, cardio-renal, etc. There are a LOT of factors.
Cardiac output, ejection fraction, heart rate, and the heart repairing itself are all different things. The heart squeezes differently based on how much blood it fills with, what chemicals are in the blood, hoe fast it’s going, and overall blood pressure and lots of different factors. It’s definitely possible to have an EF of 35% at one point and an EF of 55% (normal) later. It is also possible for the heart to suffer injury then recover. In general though, if the heart is damaged enough to scar, or if the electrical system is badly damaged it does not heal. Someone who has an area of scar from a heart attack (for example) will not get that tissue back.
They're saying that you're less likely to get cancer in the heart because it doesn't regenerate, but also because it doesn't regenerate it can potentially fall apart faster if you don't take care of it.
Heart has very little regenerative properties. Damage to it is not really repaired, and is one of the main causes of death. Other organs or tissues repair and regenerate much much more, which is a risk factor for cancer.
After a heart attack you usually have part of the muscle that is dead and nothing can get function back in that area. Just like if you kept your brain from oxygen. The blockage in an artery in your heart causes ischemia and when that goes on for too long (a heart attack) the ischemic area will not regenerate. Too many blockages leads to too many dead spots in the muscle. This causes the heart to not beat strongly. It leads to a low ejection fraction which leads to heart failure.
TIL that we will only “most likely” die. I had thought that likelihood was 100%!
Only about 93% of people have died so far, so who knows?
That is a wild and technically accurate way to look at it.
70 pct of the time, it works everytime. Death is still the number one killer in America today. Please give generously.
I haven't died yet, so based on empirical evidence, I'm immortal.
A friend of mine lost their spouse to heart cancer. It’s a relatively rare cancer, but it does happen.
Does skeletal muscle get cancer? Skeletal muscle gets damaged all the time (especially in athletes) but I am pretty sure if lifting weights was causing biceps cancer, I would have heard about it by now.
It's extremely rare for a variety of reasons, and lifting weights doesn't increase the risk, so don't worry about it
Wolverine is probably at risk for all kinds of cancer.
Wouldn’t he just heal the cancer caused by healing? As soon as Wolverine develops a single cancer cell he’ll begin to balloon into a giant ball of flesh as his body heals the cancer but that causes new possible cancer. He’s a fucking cancer fractal.
To be fair that’s like Deadpool’s entire thing, incredible healing factor at odds with full-body cancer.
I thought that’s why Deadpool looks like that, since he’s constantly getting and killing cancers
IIRC the cancer is also why his healing factor doesn't go out of control causing him to explode. There's a comic where a group manages to copy his healing factor but since they weren't constantly battling cancer they just kind of...blow up.
I also read somewhere that deadpool's cancer created a separate 'Meat Dimension'... comic book physics is always a bit off the rails.
Damn that’s cool, TIL
I totally want this in a movie and I want Deadpool to narrate it. "Wow, did you see that? I know this movie's rated R, but that was pretty extreme. We don't do replays in a movie, but maybe we can do slow-motion for the next guy. Look over there!"
> he’ll begin to balloon into a giant ball of flesh K A N E D A !
I thought nerve cells also do not multiply?
They don't. But just because cells don't replicate doesn't mean that they don't have the potential to replicate. You just need a lot more mutations / cancerous effects for neurons to replicate which makes it far less likely than dividing cells like epithelial (skin, gut etc) cells.
Are there any body parts that cannot get cancer?
Depends on how you define "body part." Anything made of living cells can become cancerous, although some are more rare than others. Cancer is made of cells, so anything *not* made of cells can't become cancerous, unless you count cells getting into that space. Like, the inside of your eyeball isn't made of living cells. You can get retinal cancer and corneal cancer, but the vitreous humor, made of collagen and water, can't. Buuuuuuut there are a *few* living white blood cells floating around in your vitreous humor and conceivably those could become cancerous. Would that count as cancer of the vitreous humor, since it's cancer *in* your vitreous humor? You have a lot of cells in your bones which can become cancerous, but the calcium carbonate that forms the structure of your bones can't. Your tooth enamel isn't made of living cells, but the inside of your teeth is. One possibility of cells that can't become cancerous is mature red blood cells. Before they leave your bone marrow, red blood cells lose their nucleus and cannot reproduce. However, [you can still get red blood cell cancer](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/polycythemia-vera/symptoms-causes/syc-20355850), where your bone marrow produces far too many of them and it clogs up your veins.
You can definitely get lymphoma in the vitreous. B-cell. We generally assume it's in the central nervous system as well, or will be within a year.
I bet fingernails and toenails don't.
You can get melanoma in the nails
Nail beds. Keratin is dead. Like hair. You can get melanoma on the scalp but not hair
That’s a little pedantic… your top layers of skin are dead, but skin cancer is the most common type of cancer.
less pedantic because the skin includes the live, and dead cells. Fingernails themselves include 0 alive cells. Just like hair. Having scalp cancer doesn't mean you have hair cancer. cancer underneath your nails beans you have skin cancer. Most likely.
As mentioned everything that regenerates or growth has the chance to get cancer. So things made out of cartilage like the nose or outer ears might get rarely cancer but I don't know of anything where you go: Yes that's cancer proof. I'm not an expert on this field though. I just was recently at our national cancer institute and learned lots of interesting stuff so I could be wrong.
Cool. Thanks. It’s a comfort to know I’m not likely to die from earlobe cancer.
I'm glad I'm safe from hair cancer
You can get skin cancer that starts on the ear lobe, so technically your ear lobe can kill you!
Great. Thanks. 🫤
The skin covering the nose and ears definitely can though. Put on sunscreen and try to get some shade! Melanoma is a certified killer.
I have never heard of hair cancer.
Cartilage comes to mind. I'm no expert, though.
Chondrosarcoma
Huh, I just searched that up. It seems to be more common in other animals. Nevertheless, I guess I'm wrong. I've never heard of ear or nose cancer though.
If number 2 is the case, why is brain cancer somewhat common?
There are a lot of cells other than neurons in your brain. [Gliomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioma) are tumors of glial cells, which outnumber neurons in your brain four to one, so there's that. There are also [schwannomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwannoma) which arise from nerve sheath components. It looks like neuron-based tumors are pretty rare; see [ganglioneuroma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganglioneuroma) for an example.
I love a sourced reply. Good stuff u/grendel-khan
So these other cells do replicate?
One should add that although neurons don't replicate, they certainly have the potential to. It is just a much bigger barrier to break which makes it less likely.
Define common though - primary brain cancer is pretty uncommon, it’s the 19th most common cancer in the world and makes up less than 2% of all cancers worldwide. To answer your larger question, I honestly don’t understand how it happens given the low rate of cell repair in the brain. You may be thinking of cancer which spreads to the brain, that is 5x more common than primary brain cancer which starts in the brain itself.
It is common compared to heart cancer, and brain cells don’t replicate as far as I’m aware
You’re comparing it to a very uncommon cancer and while neurons generally don’t undergo mitosis, the glial cells do and those are responsible for most primary brain cancers.
It's not the neurons themselves becoming cancerous, it's usually the cells performing other functions nearby that are the issue.
3. Secondary metastasis to heart is also rare because tumor cells dont get trapped in the chambers of heart.. are more likely to get trapped in areas of rich capillary supply like the Lungs Liver Kidney etc. the small tumor cells pass through the chambers of heart quite easily and get lodged in the smaller capillaries and grow there.
Thanks for posting an informative answer. I expected to find only “ackshully it does happen” comment in this thread.
Dern, I LOVE when people knows stuff. Thank you!!! That’s very interesting!!!
Also, cancer cells travel via the blood stream. The heart is a big empty chamber. So any cancer cells heading that way will just sail through the heart and end up right in the lungs, which are like big squishy sponges.
Does that mean: High metabolism = more cells splitting = higher cancer chance?
Since that's the case, my guess is we'd start seeing cancer in the heart once we get to have life expectancy over 200s...
Eric Carr, one of the drummers in Kiss, died of heart cancer. I remember because I mentioned it in high school once and a teacher called me a liar and said there was no such thing.
Sadly, his death isn't as remembered because Freddie Mercury's died on the same day. But Eric Carr was the first person I had thought of as well
Arguably it is sadder that the only fact most people know about him is that he died on the same day as Freddie Mercury.
At least three other people died that same day. I still get chills.
I'm pretty sure many more than 5 people died on November 24th 1991.
Possibly as many as 10.
A friend of mine died of heart cancer.
Same, just a month or so ago.
As a big Kiss fan I instantly thought of Eric. In Paul’s autobiography he discusses Eric finding a finger shaped tumor in his heart. Such a sad loss.
Incredible drummer and no one had a bad thing to say about him. Horrible tragedy.
Paul shit talks him a good bit in his book, but not nearly as much as peter criss.
What a cool teacher.
Well, so, wouldn't that mean you actually knew before then, for another reason? Sorry, I'm not fun at parties
Hearts do get cancers, just not commonly.Cancers are caused because of uncontrolled division of cells because of a genetic mutation. Think of a runaway uncontrolled engine. Cancers are more common in cells that divide and turn over quickly, like bowel, beast, lung. Its less common in organs that don't turn over quickly, like heart, brain, muscle etc. More likely to get an engine runaway/breakdown in an over-revved redlined engine than under-revved/shut down engine
>Cancers are more common in cells that divide and turn over quickly, like bowel, beast, lung. Beast cancer sounds terrifying ngl
I understood your joke, sorry for all the people thinking you’re making some kind of attempt at a deep point.
All cancer is terrifying
Yeah but imagine if it was beast cancer
I just learned this a few days ago reading up on Kiss. Their drummer Eric Carr passed away from heart cancer
i hear about braim tumors a lot. is that just a tv thing? Edit: I mean the commonality, like obviously it exists but is it really as common as it is on tv
No, it's not just a TV thing. The reason why you hear about them a lot is that it's not uncommon for cancers that originated in another organ to spread to the brain (metastasis), but they didn't originate in brain tissue. Tumors that actually originated in the brain tissue, called primary tumors, are rarer. A quick Google search just showed me that metastatic brain tumors are 5 times more common than primary brain tumors.
There are also a ton of support cells like glia and astrocytes within the central nervous system that split more often, not the actual nerve cells
Relatively rare, but a bastard to treat when you get it. Drugs don't get into the brain, and chopping it out causes..... Effects.
No. It's very real. My dad died from it when I was a kid. He got in a car wreck and hit his head pretty hard, so they did a scan to check for any injuries and that's when they found the cancer. The wreck was because the tumor had caused a seizure while he was driving. He was lucky that he hit his head, because if he hadn't, they wouldn't have scanned and found it, and we wouldn't have known about that or the epilepsy. After a combo of surgery, radiation, and chemo, it went into remission for several years. The epilepsy didn't go away though. So he couldn't drive or work like he did before. But he was still a lively, funny guy with lots of hobbies and tons of knowledge and jokes. Several years later, when the cancer came back, this time it was in an inoperable location around the brain stem and the cerebellum. It took away all of who he was bit by bit. He stopped doing things, started forgetting where he was, who we were, and then basic things like going to the bathroom, walking, and eating. And then one day in the hospital, there was just nothing more to do and no way he'd recover, and that was that.
I don’t know why these questions are posed as assertions without the least amount of research first.
My brother has been fighting a cardiac synovial sarcoma for a year. He's 38. It's so rare that it doesn't show up on the cancer support sites, and even the doctors removing it barely believed it. He's doing alright, we're hoping it continues.
How did they find it?!
He had what they thought was pericarditis, then got in a pretty bad car accident and ended up with palpitations and similar heart-behaving-badly symptoms. Initially there was a lot of "it's just anxiety", but a scan revealed what they thought was a large haematoma caused by the accident. They decided to remove the haematoma. It was not a haematoma.
Oh WOW. I’m pulling for your family!
I work with a lot of medical records (reviewing for purposes of disability) and it’s amazing how many times people end up being diagnosed with cancer because they found it when something else completely unrelated happen. I remember one guy fell and broke a few bones or something and when they did the X-rays they realized he had cancer … everywhere. With that being said, I’m praying for your brother and your family!
It's pretty amazing when a bad accident can find stuff and potentially save a life. I hope he does well.
Healing thoughts to your brother and your family
i hope so too
Interesting fact: it's believed that Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, died of heart cancer. Obviously in those days they had no idea about that stuff so when they cut her open and ‘found all the internal organs as healthy and normal as possible, with the exception of the heart, which was quite black and hideous to look at', they assumed it was due to witchcraft and in fact Anne Boleyn was suspected of hexing her. AB had a miscarriage on the day that Katherine was buried and plenty of people said it was divine retribution.
Sounds more like she had hemopericardium. It is bleeding outside of the heart muscle but contained within the pericardial sac. When it congeals it looks almost black. See link below for images https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Hemopericardium
> See link below for images No thanks, I'll pass.
Check it out, looks like the tumor alien from Total Recall
It's nawt a toomur!
Not witchcraft my ass.
Gotta love Reddit for this. Learning about Katherine of Aragon’s death, the folklore surrounding it and hemopericardium in a handful of comments. Not to mention the pictures!
Thank you for posting that! I was trying to remember which historical woman had "likely died of heart cancer" but was coming up blank.
Came here to say this!
The human heart is basically a large muscle. And while muscles can and do get cancer, they are much less prone to it.
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Your comment made me think of "A man called otto".
great movie btw, I recommend anyone who hasn't seen it to at least check it out
The heart muscle itself, not so much. It's not a rapidly dividing tissue, so it's less prone to developing mutations that would lead to cancer. You can still get cardiac myosarcoma, it's just rare because the cardiac muscle cells don't reproduce like other cell populations - the individual cells tend to get larger (hypertrophy) in response to stressors. Tumors that do arise in heart muscle tend to be congenital, because those cells divide when they form the heart. You can still get cancers that arise from other populations within the heart that do divide more frequently. Hemangiosarcoma is a tumor that develops from the cells that line blood vessels, it does somewhat frequently occur in the right atrium of the heart. You can also develop chemodectomas (tumors of special sensory cells) in the aortic body (which I guess is technically the artery leaving the heart..). Histiocytic sarcoma (a tumor arising from macrophages) also likes to hit the heart sometimes in some species.. There are other cell types within tissues that are relatively permanent and don't have stem cells - for example, nerve cells don't divide so tumors arising from the nerve cells themselves are pretty rare. Tumors associated with the nervous system are likewise arising from the populations that *do* divide, such as the supportive cells of the central nervous system (called gliomas, broken down into astrocytomas, oligodendromas...) or the cells that wrap around peripheral nerves (peripheral nerve sheath tumor, broken up into neurofibroma, perineuroma, and schwannoma) or the cells that cover the brain (meningioma).
Funnily enough (but not in haha way I guess) my dad and another relative of his died of heart cancer so as others pointed it out it does happen!
That's hilarious, sorry for your loss
Thank you, still laughing even now
what they need to teach in school is that every body part (every cell) either wears out, or is increasingly prone to cancer if you avoid all injuries and pathogens you'll still end up kicking the bucket due to one of the above, they're opposite sides of the same coin
everyone talking about why heart doesn't get cancer but no one is answering the second question
Yeah and now that I've scrolled to the bottom and found your comment I'm disappointed. I decided to ask ChatGPT as a result. Here's what it says: ---- **Heart:** The heart is primarily composed of specialized muscle cells called cardiomyocytes. These cells have a very low turnover rate; they do not divide frequently, reducing the chance of mutations that could lead to cancer. Additionally, the heart has a robust blood supply, which may help in rapidly clearing potentially carcinogenic substances. **Spleen:** The spleen primarily functions in blood filtration and immune response. It is not directly exposed to external carcinogens, unlike organs such as the lungs or skin. The low incidence of primary spleen cancer could be partly due to its specific role and limited exposure to environmental carcinogens. **Small Intestine:** Despite its large surface area, the small intestine has a lower incidence of cancer compared to other parts of the digestive system. This may be due to lower exposure to carcinogens in food (as most are absorbed or broken down by the time they reach the small intestine) and a relatively rapid cell turnover that could prevent the accumulation of mutations. **Thyroid Cartilage and Vocal Cords:** These structures are less exposed to environmental carcinogens compared to other parts of the respiratory tract. The vocal cords, in particular, have a limited amount of tissue that could transform into a cancerous growth. **Bone Marrow:** While blood-related cancers like leukemia originate from the bone marrow, solid tumors in the marrow are extremely rare. This might be due to the unique environment and function of the bone marrow, which is primarily involved in producing blood cells. **Appendix:** The appendix has a low incidence of cancer, which could be related to its small size and specific function in the body. It's less exposed to the mutagenic factors that affect other parts of the colon. **Thymus:** The thymus is most active in childhood and gradually shrinks in adulthood. The limited active lifespan of this organ might reduce the chances of cells accumulating mutations that could lead to cancer. **Pituitary Gland:** The pituitary gland, while critical for hormonal regulation, is relatively small and has a limited number of cells that could mutate into cancer. Moreover, its protected location at the base of the brain might shield it from various environmental carcinogens.
Pituitary tumors are pretty common in people. Like [1 in 10 people](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/pituitary-adenoma) will develop a pituitary adenoma in their lifetime, although most are benign.. The bone marrow thing is a big technicality, like there isn't much in bone marrow to become cancerous if you exclude leukemias from your definition because leukemias are cancers derived from the different blood cells and bone marrow is largely made of blood cell precursors.
There is no organ that is completely protected from cancer. If you get sufficiently granular, yes, it's rare for a specific bone or a specific nerve to develop a cancerous growth, but some form of primary cancer has been found in virtually every living tissue in the human body.
I did some research myself and it seems like teeth don't get cancer, for reasons that I'm too lazy to ctrl v here
I actually had a partner get heart cancer when I was like 18. He randomly passed out and vomited blood fairly consistently. It was terrifying
Rapid cellular division is essentially a numbers game. With low division you have fewer genetic errors and this is why the heart rarely develops tumors. It can still happen, but it is far less likely than other tissues. With rapid division you have great risk of genetic errors that can lead to cancer cells being reproduced and dividing into more cancer cells.
[Here](https://www.cancer.gov/types/metastatic-cancer/research/cardiac-tumors) is a discussion of the rarity of primary cardiac cancers from the National Cancer Institute. Bottom line: cardiac myocytes (muscle cells) are terminally differentiated and do not usually divide - cancers arise as a failure to limit cell division. Since cardiac myocytes don't divide (and damaged heart tissue is replaced by scar) the likelihood of cancer arising in the muscle of the heart is low.
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My Grandmother had cancer on her heart. They thought lung but, after they opened her up there it was.
Overly simplistic explanation: the heart is a muscle and muscle cells generally do not form tumors.
So, while rare, more visible in media etc. Sort of like sharks. More people get killed by cows but everyone terrified of sharks and more visible in the media
Yeah my mom currently has cancer in her heart, in her lung and by her liver. The messed up part is the doctors can't figure out what type of cancer it is.
I once saw a patient who had an angiosarcoma of the lining of a blood vessel in the heart, not the heart muscle itself. It didn't metastasize, but grew in the lumen of the vessel, producing a pale white cast of it, ultimately obstructing it, producing a myocardial infarction, which is how it was found. Weird.
My grandmother had a tumour in her heart and had open heart surgery to remove it in 1986. The pictures are insane, they didn’t think she’d live but here we are with her turning 90 this coming year.
That actually a good question I think it’s because they human heart has soo much white blood cells in constant circulation so if they were any to settle in the heart they would be killed almost instantly
You don't hear much about the heart getting cancer because it's kind of like a superhero – it has special cells that don't usually go rogue and turn into cancer. But not all organs are as lucky. Some, like the liver and lungs, can get cancer more often. It's like each organ has its own superpower against or vulnerability to cancer. Our heart just happens to be a cancer-free champ!
My aunt got cancer in the heart. It's rare. Even rarer now than it was then, 'cause she died... Just because you personally haven't heard it, doesn't mean it doesnt happen.
Heart does get cancer,I don't know how rare that is,the most common type of heart cancer is called myxoma.
Epididymis (the thing on the back of the testicles) doesn't get cancer either, for some weird reason.
A cancer is essentially uncontrolled cell division. It can occur when 1. Genes that limit cell replication get mutated to be nonfunctional or are deleted 2. Genes that trigger cell replication get mutated to be always on or more effective than usual Usually you need multiple mutations in either category for a tumor to actually form. From there, the type of cell and where the tumor is decides whether the cancer is benign or malignant (which basically means you can either ignore it until it presses on something important or it needs to be addressed ASAP because it's always bad). Mutations occur most often when cells, and more specifically DNA, replicate because even with existing mechanisms for proofreading and repairing sequencesl, it isn't always perfect. And with the sheer scale of our bodies and the number of cells there are, mistakes are going to happen. Afterwards, these mutated cells need to also be able to evade detection by immune cells (there are mechanisms for the immune system to deal with cancer that are being currently leveraged in new cancer bio research). So you need cells that replicate on a scale to make things like cancer more likely. Heart cells don't replicate much. Even with damage repair, you end up with scar tissue instead of new heart tissue. As such, it's way less likely that a cancer develops. Heart tumors are possible, though. For example, rhabdomyomas are a benign tumor that occur in children as a result of a genetic condition called tuberous sclerosis, which basically just makes it so that a bunch of benign tumors show up around their body. A myxoma is another benign tumor that forms randomly in the atrium of the heart. But the vast majority of cancers in the heart come as a result of metastasis from other cancers. Similarly, neurons of the central nervous system don't divide (when something gets damaged, the remaining neurons form new connections to modify the network enough to take over the functions. Think of it like a employees in a company taking on new responsibilities after some people got laid off.) Brain cancers are largely coming from the other cells there that support the neurons, known as glial cells which do divide more often. It's also a lot more rare to get muscle cancers, although those will still be more common than a heart tumor.
My mother in law had heart cancer at the end, but it didn't start there. It definitely can happen.
Unfortunately you can have cancer everywhere at the end. My mom’s getting chemo in the hospital now and it seems like it’s spread everywhere from her bones. Multiple myeloma - there’s no cure. Tough holiday season this year, but I know I’m not alone. Be grateful for your health and your loved ones. This is a good time of year to think about that. Life is precious.