Hospitals and Healthcare

What is cardiac angiosarcoma?

First described by doctors in 1934, cardiac angiosarcoma is a rare form of cancer that causes cells inside the blood vessels of the heart to multiply and form tumors. The cancerous cells are often found in blood vessels lining the musculature of the wall of the heart, said Dr. Robert Maki, a medical oncologist and the clinical director of the Sarcoma Program at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia.

These cancers are part of a larger family of cancers called sarcomas, which affect the connective tissues that support and surround other parts of the body, including muscle, fat and blood vessels. Angiosarcomas are a kind of sarcoma that specifically afflict cells that line blood vessels, and cardiac angiosarcomas are angiosarcomas that occur within or around the heart.

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy – commonly known as broken heart syndrome – is rare but real. As a heart and lung surgeon, Dr Nikki Stamp ( @drnikkistamp )  has seen a few cases herself, and the phenomenon provides a compelling opening chapter to her first book, Can You Die of a Broken Heart? The title reminds us of when Debbie Reynolds died “of a broken heart” the day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, passed away in 2016, but this book rises far above the online pseudoscience accompanying those reports. It is possible to be so affected by grief or shock that a predisposed heart simply cannot cope, and Stamp uses this as an opener to explore the myriad ways modern medicine is only recently understanding (and admitting) to the connection between body and emotion.

The Delta COVID-19 variant could be putting young, healthy people at greater risk of fatal heart complications, according to the director of Australia's leading cardiac research centre.