Cardiac metastasis in a laryngeal carcinoma and associated electrocardiographic changes

Abstract

In patients with cancer, metastases to the heart are rare and usually difficult to diagnose unless they cause symptoms. Cardiac metastasis of laryngeal carcinoma is also rarely reported in the literature. This report deals with a 63-year-old male patient with carcinoma of the larynx that involved the heart. The patient presented with chest pain, and the electrocardiogram revealed new ST segment elevation in the precordial leads. The cardiac markers were negative, and the electrocardiogram showed no changes during the course in the cardiology clinic. Although the patient was stable, he had massive hemorrhage at his tracheotomy site and died on the sixth day of hospitalization. A necropsy of the myocardium showed metastasis of squamous cell carcinoma to the heart. We conclude that the electrocardiographic changes in cancer patients during the course of the disease may provide a clue for detection of cardiac involvement. Heart metastasis in cancer patients is rare. When this rare events occurs, diagnoses are usually based on postmortem examinations. However, electrocardiographic changes may serve as a clue for detection of involvement of the myocardium. Here we present a male patient, aged 63 years, with laryngeal carcinoma with heart metastasis, a rare condition reported 3 decades ago by Harrer et al.