Sunnymom3
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Posts:9
Hi Dr. West,
My mom is over 5 years since her stage IV diagnosis and on her 5th line of drugs. Lately she has been complaining of heart palpitations, sometimes they even wake her at night, other times her heart just starts racing. In her ct scans there does seem to be mention of masses near in or myocardium. We were wondering if the cancer can actually be in your heart muscle, is this common in stage IV lung cancer? Is this a sign the cancer is progressing and this is becoming end stage? Other than this she still feels fine,looks good, is living a normal life, receiving chemo every 2 weeks. Thanks.
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Reply # - August 9, 2012, 08:39 PM
Reply To: Heart problems from stage IV lung cancer?
It is quite rare for a lung tumor to actually invade the heart itself. I can think of perhaps two cases of mine over the past decade (out of several hundred patients I treated in that time) in which that happened. However, lung cancer can grow adjacent to the heart and cause twitchiness in the system that regulates the rhythm and speed of the heart beating; that'd be more common. However, that doesn't necessarily have major implications for prognosis beyond it representing progressing cancer. Tumor growing into the heart itself has a much more grave prognosis, but as I said, that's very uncommon.
-Dr. West