It seems like most cancers are organ-specific (lung, ovary, skin, etc) but I’ve never heard of heart cancer. Is there a reason why?
Edit: Wow! Thanks for all the interesting feedback and comments! I had no idea my question would spark such a fascinating discussion! I learned so much!
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Heart cancer is a thing, but it is comparatively rare. A simplified explanation is that, because cancer happens when cells accumulate enough mutations throughout their replication cycles and start growing abnormally and uncontrollably, the less cell division/turnover a tissue has, the less likely it is to develop cancer. The tissues in the heart do indeed have a lower turnover than others.
Because of this, secondary heart tumors (caused by metastasized cancer coming from another part of the body) are much more common than primary tumors (caused be the heart tissue itself becoming cancerous). So, in the rare event when a tumor does appear in the heart (and many of them can actually be benign), it’s around 100 times more likely that it came from cancer spreading from somewhere else than starting from the heart itself.
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