A 23-year-old man arrived at a hospital in Changsha, China, with episodic chest pain and a blood pressure reading of 210/140 mmHg. The cause was not his kidneys, his diet, or a stiffened artery. It was a tumor growing inside the upper left chamber of his heart, manufacturing stress hormones and releasing them into his bloodstream.
Cardiovascular surgeons at the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University described the case in a report published in Discover Oncology. Rather than going straight to the operating room, the team threaded a catheter into the coronary branches feeding the tumor and blocked them off, then waited for the patient's hormone levels to settle before opening his chest.
