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Why is heart cancer rare?

Cancer of the heart is indeed rare. Cancers originating from neighboring organs such as the kidney and the lungs occasionally migrate to the heart, but cancer originating from the heart itself is very uncommon. When it does occur, the outcome is not good. The most common cancer of the heart is the angiosarcoma.


The heart is a muscular organ made up of cells called myocytes. Unlike cells making up other organs in the body, myocytes...

Cancer of the heart is indeed rare. Cancers originating from neighboring organs such as the kidney and the lungs occasionally migrate to the heart, but cancer originating from the heart itself is very uncommon. When it does occur, the outcome is not good. The most common cancer of the heart is the angiosarcoma.


The heart is a muscular organ made up of cells called myocytes. Unlike cells making up other organs in the body, myocytes attain terminal differentiation very early in the life of a person, which implies that these cells stop dividing and increasing in number quite early in life. They only grow by increases in cell size rather than in number. This key attribute of the myocytes prevents them from proliferating like the cells of other organs and makes them less likely to become cancerous.


This is obviously a good thing, as they are rarely able to give rise to cancers, but one unrelated downside to this attribute is that they are unable to repair damaged tissue since they cannot proliferate themselves. That explains the inability of the heart muscle to regenerate and replace damaged heart tissue following a heart attack.

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