Short answers, pulled from the story.
Primary malignant cardiac tumors have an incidence of 34 cases per million persons. A study from 1973 to 2011 found that the incidence has doubled over the past four decades.
At Mayo Clinic, on average only one case of heart cancer is seen each year. This scarcity creates a medical paradox where the organ that pumps blood for a lifetime is also the least likely place to develop a primary malignancy.
Malignant melanomas frequently metastasize to the heart and represent the tumor with the highest rate of cardiac metastases, appearing in more than half of cases. Secondary or metastatic heart tumors occur even 100 times more often than primary heart tumors.
The associated mortality was very high, with only 46% of patients alive after one year. Sarcomas and mesotheliomas had the worst survival, while lymphomas had better survival.
Henry VIII's first wife Catherine of Aragon, Eric Carr, Alexander Belov, Ondřej Buchtela, Mimi Lerner, Virgil Abloh, and Akkaphan Namart all died of heart cancer or cardiac tumors. Akkaphan Namart was diagnosed with the disease in 2022 and died two years later.
In a study conducted at the Hospital of the Medical University of Vienna, 113 primary cardiac tumor cases were identified in a time period of 15 years with 11 being malignant. The mean survival in the latter group of patients was found to be extremely low.