Primary Cardiac Sarcoma: Clinical Characteristics and Prognostic Factors over the Past 2 Decades.
Publication/Presentation Date
5-14-2023
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Primary cardiac sarcomas (PCS) are extremely rare malignant tumors involving the heart. Only isolated case reports have been described in the literature over different periods of time. This pathology has been associated with a dismal prognosis and given its rarity; treatment options are very limited. Furthermore, there are contrasting data about the effectiveness of current treatment modalities in improving the survival of patients with PCS, including surgical resection which is the mainstay of therapy. There is a paucity of data on the epidemiological characteristics of PCS. This study has the objective of investigating the epidemiologic characteristics, survival outcomes, and independent prognostic factors of PCS.
METHODS: A total of 362 patients were ultimately registered in our study from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The study period was from 2000 to 2017. Demographics such as clinical characteristics, overall mortality (OM), and PCS-specific mortality (CSM) were taken into account. A
RESULTS: Crude analysis revealed a high OM in age 80+ (HR = 5.958, 95% CI 3.357-10.575,
CONCLUSION: In this United States population-based retrospective cohort study using the SEER database, we found that cardiac rhabdomyosarcoma was associated with the lowest CSM and OM. Furthermore, as expected, age and advanced disease at diagnosis were independent factors predicting poor prognosis. Surgical resection of the primary tumor showed lower CSM and OM in the crude analysis but when adjusted for covariates in the multivariate analysis, it did not significantly impact the overall mortality or the cancer-specific mortality. These findings allow for treating clinicians to recognize patients that should be referred to palliative/hospice care at the time of diagnosis and avoid any surgical interventions as they did not show any differences in mortality. Surgical resection, adjuvant chemotherapy, and/or radiation in patients with poor prognoses should be reserved as palliative measures rather than an attempt to cure the disease.
Volume
11
Issue
2
ISSN
2079-9721
Published In/Presented At
Bangolo, A., Fwelo, P., Iyer, K. M., Klinger, S., Tavares, L., Dey, S., Chacko, A. A., Hein, M., Gudena, S., Lawal, G., Sivasubramanian, B. P., Rimba, Z., Hirpara, K., Merajunnissa, M., Veliginti, S., Arana, G., Sathyarajan, D. T., Singh, S., Shetty, T., Bhardwaj, K., … Weissman, S. (2023). Primary Cardiac Sarcoma: Clinical Characteristics and Prognostic Factors over the Past 2 Decades. Diseases (Basel, Switzerland), 11(2), 74. https://doi.org/10.3390/diseases11020074
PubMedID
37218887
Department(s)
Department of Medicine
Document Type
Article