This historical review highlights that secondary tumors of the heart, while considered rare, are found in a notable percentage of autopsies of patients with malignant disease.
May inform cardiac evaluation in advanced cancer; leaves open contemporary prevalence with modern imaging and therapies.
HEKTOEN,¹in 1893, while reporting two cases of secondary tumors of the heart, stated that 110 such cases had already been recorded. Despite this relatively impressive number and the numerous reports since that time, the recent literature contains references to the considered rarity of these tumors (Fischer,²Lymburner³). Several lengthy statistical reports on the subject have appeared in the literature since the turn of the century (Peters and Milne,⁴Morris,⁵Yater,⁶Hamilton,⁷Pollia and Gogol,⁸Scott and Garvin,⁹Lisa and associates,¹⁰Prichard¹¹). Siegel and Young,¹²in 1933, reported 3 cases of metastatic tumors in 44 cases of malignant disease (7.4%) among 592 autopsies. Burke,¹³in 1934, in an analysis of 327 autopsies for malignant disease, observed 14 instances of metastatic involvement of cardiac muscle (4.3%). In the same year, Lymburner³noted 52 secondary tumors of the heart in a review of 8,550 autopsies at the Mayo Clinic (0.6% for all
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JAMES F. DeLOACH (1953) studied this question.
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