Cardiac Sarcomas
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Treatment and outcome of cardiac and pulmonary vessel sarcomas treated at the Royal Marsden
IRAS ID
182861
Contact name
Robin Jones
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 3 days
Research summary
Sarcomas are rare tumours of connective tissue and can affect any part of the body. They account for about 1% of adult cancers and are made up of over 80 different subtypes, each with their own biological behaviour and response to systemic therapy. Primary cardiac neoplasms are extremely rare, with a reported autopsy incidence of 0.0001-0.03%, or around 1 in every 500 cardiovascular surgical cases. Due to the lack of data, the management of these tumours has been guided by small retrospective case series and non-cardiac sarcoma management principles. Consequently, complete surgical resection (if feasible) is considered the mainstay of management. However, in many cases surgical resection is not possible due to the anatomic location and size of the tumour, the presence of metastatic disease, anticipated morbidity and the limited data regarding any potential impact on survival of a large operative procedure. In many centres neoadjuvant/ adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation are also offered, but the outcome remains poor.
Consequently, the optimal management and potential prognostic/ predictive factors for these tumours are poorly defined. Therefore, we wish to evaluate the treatment and outcome of patients with heart and adjacent vessel sarcomas treated at the Royal Marsden Hospital. We also wish to perform an exploratory pilot study of potential predictive and prognostic markers in patients with cardiac and pulmonary vessel sarcomas, assessing clinical, histological and molecular markers.REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EM/0019
Date of REC Opinion
13 Jan 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion