title: Heart transplantation: an approach to treating primary cardiac sarcoma?
abstract: Treating rare, primary cardiac soft-tissue sarcomas (C-STS) with heart transplantation (HTx) is controversial. Conventional tumor resection only partially alleviates the disease, and patients die of local recurrence of the tumor or of distant metastases. Heart transplantation offers the opportunity to eradicate the primary malignancy completely. In our experience of 4 patients with C-STS indicates, HTx followed by post-operative chemotherapy does not affect the long-term outcome. However, pre-operative chemotherapy can regress tumors in chemosensitive C-STS and potentially eradicate early micrometastases. Consecutive HTx for responders may then offer a chance of long-term survival.
authors.affiliation: Division of Cardiac Surgery, Klinikum Grosshadern, University of Munich, Munich, Germany. peter.ueberfuhr@hch.med.uni-muenchen.de
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Uberfuhr
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Meiser
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fuchs
authors.forename: Costas
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schulze
authors.forename: Hermann
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Reichenspurner
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Falk
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wintersperger
authors.forename: Rolf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Issels
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Reichart
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017024:Chemotherapy, Adjuvant; D005260:Female; D006338:Heart Neoplasms / Q000601:surgery*; D016027:Heart Transplantation; D006393:Hemangiopericytoma / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000601:surgery; D006394:Hemangiosarcoma / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D007890:Leiomyosarcoma / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000601:surgery; D011379:Prognosis; D012509:Sarcoma / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000601:surgery*; D016896:Treatment Outcome