“Medical prevention is essential!”. Manager Flavio Briatore wrote on social media saying he had undergone heart surgery.
“Following a routine check-up – he said -, I underwent heart surgery because I had a benign mass which was removed with a minimally invasive operation, using an endoscopic technique” he himself wrote on social media.
“The surgery was a perfect success, and I warmly thank Prof. Francesco Maisano, the Cardiac Surgical Intensive Care Team and the legendary 1st Q Department of San Raffaele” he added.
Oncologists, for benign heart tumors, surgery is generally curative and the prognosis is excellent
“Surgical treatment in primary forms of benign tumors of the heart is generally curative and in these cases the prognosis is usually excellent.” Nicola Silvestris, national secretary of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology (Aiom) and professor of Oncology at the University of Messina, explains it, referring to the operation undergone by Flavio Briatore, who announced that he was undergoing surgery for the removal of a benign mass in the heart using a minimally invasive endoscopic technique.
“Cardiac tumors, i.e. those that originate at the level of the heart, can be either primitive, when they originate from the heart, or metastatic if the heart is affected by metastases deriving from a tumor located elsewhere”. Primary cardiac tumors, specifies the oncologist, “can be malignant or benign: approximately 70-80% are fortunately benign and only 20-30% are malignant”. As for localization, they can arise in various structures of the cardiac organ, affecting the myocardium, i.e. the heart muscle, the endocardium, i.e. the membrane that lines the cavities of the heart or the pericardium, which is the membrane that externally covers the heart. Benign cardiac tumors “are therefore more frequent than malignant neoplasms and, among these, the most common ones – says Silvestris – are cardiac myxoma, fibromas, fibroelastomas”.
Furthermore, these benign tumors “can be completely asymptomatic, and are usually revealed during a cardiac examination for other reasons, as in the case of Flavio Briatore; in some cases, however, cardiac symptoms such as arrhythmias, a picture of heart failure and endocarditis”. Diagnostic tests are fundamental: “There are in fact precise radiological criteria that help in the diagnosis, taking into account that some benign lesions have specific radiological characteristics that distinguish them from malignant lesions. In the case of malignant cardiac tumors however, being rare, it is essential that they are managed and treated only in highly specialized centers with high volumes of activity”.
In general, concludes the president of the Aiom Foundation Saverio Cinieri, “it is however good to never neglect any symptoms, even the apparently mildest ones, from chest pain to slight difficulty breathing, and always talk about it with your doctor”.
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