Heart tumours in children: rare, mostly benign, and increasingly spotted
A review pulls together what doctors know about tumours that begin in a child's heart.
A lump growing inside a child's heart sounds alarming. Most of the time, though, it is not cancer.
In The Ulutas Medical Journal, a review gathers the evidence on primary cardiac tumours in children: how common they are, which kinds appear, and how they are found and managed.
Roughly nine in ten are benign. Rhabdomyoma leads the list in fetuses and children, while myxoma, the usual heart tumour of adults, almost never shows up in newborns. Several tumours seen together early in life often point to tuberous sclerosis.
Some children have no symptoms at all; others arrive with heart failure, a murmur or rhythm problems. Ultrasound of the heart comes first, and MRI or CT add detail. Care can mean simple monitoring, an operation or even a heart transplant.
Diagnoses have climbed in recent years, which the authors partly credit to better and easier imaging.
Caveat: this is a narrative review of earlier studies, not new patient data.
Source: Kevan English et al. Primary Cardiac Tumors in Children: A State-of-the-Art Review. Ulutas Med J 2026. doi:10.5455/umj.20260718040933.
Image: Figure 1 of the article, CC BY 4.0.
