How does a tumor of that size affect the heart?
Dr. Peterseim: It does cause heart failure, and inevitably, it would have caused death for the man because of the size of it. It basically impairs blood flow so that the heart doesn’t get any blood flow, and then they stop having cardiac output, and they develop heart failure. Do you know how long he would have been able to survive with that tumor had you not found it? Dr. Peterseim: It’s hard enough to know for certain, but most people would think that someone that had a tumor that size with those kinds of symptoms, over the next year, would have had difficulties or a sudden death event. How rare is a tumor like that to occur? Dr. Peterseim: It’s quite rare. Most tumors that come on the heart are from metastatic disease and they’re usually small then they grow as the other process proceeds and they’re found at the time of autopsy. However, the ones that end up getting surgery are more of a slow-growing type called myxomas, where they can be like this one which turned out to be a parag
