Suggest Treatment For Carcinoid Heart Disease

Posted on Tue, 26 Jul 2016

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Tue, 26 Jul 2016 Answered on

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 Last reviewed on

Question : No one can help me with this question. If you have Carcinoid heart disease and it has made it to the heart and damaged the right side of the heart where you have significant back flow. What are the chances of survival. Main tumor in the liver is 2"long and is in the upper half. There are also a couple of small tumors in in the liver but the main one is 2"inches long. It probably started in the small intestine.

Will a PET test show if this has spread to any other place in the body?

Answered by Dr. Indranil Ghosh (15 minutes later)

Brief Answer:
Survival can be definitely prolonged

Detailed Answer:
Hi
Thanks for your query.

In carcinoid heart disease, the cancer itself does not spread to the heart, only the substances secreted by the caner cells affect the heart valves.

So basically we have to control the release of hormones from the cancer cells in liver as well try to control the growth of cancer. This can be achieved by octreotide injections and other medicines. Local therapy to liver, like radiofrequency ablation or surgery can also be done. A whole body DOTATATE/DOTANOC PET scan can give lot of information regarding where all it has spread and help in deciding the treatment.

Even though it may be incurable, long term survival is definitely possible.

Hope this helps.
Regards

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar