Tumours metastatic to the heart are a poorly known and highly debated issue in oncology. Although the heart can be metastasised by any malignant neoplasm able to spread to distant sites, systematic studies devoted to this topic are extremely rare.
The incidence of cardiac metastatisation seems to be not as low as expected, ranging from 2.3% to 18.3%.
Although no malignant tumours are known to diffuse preferentially to the heart, some do involve the heart more often than others—for example, melanoma and mediastinal primary neoplasms. Our paper attempts to evaluate the pathophysiology, epidemiology and clinical presentation of cardiac metastatic disease, giving also an accurate pathological characterisation of the lesions.
