BREATHLESSNESS – PROBLEMS WITH HEART
If your heart is the problem there are pills or injections which can make it work more efficiently and also ones to help you pass some of the fluid that has built up in the lungs out through the urine. Your doctor should also find out why it is not working properly— important possibilities to check in people with cancer include heart damage due to adriamycin and fluid building up in the sac that surrounds the heart (the pericardial cavity). If the latter is the problem, your symptoms can be quickly improved by draining the fluid out through a needle or fine plastic tube put in through the chest wall under local anaesthetic. The needle does not go into the heart itself, just the fluid-filled sac around it. Fluid in the pleural cavity (outside the lungs) can also be drained in a similar way to produce a rapid improvement in your breathing.
If fluid has built up in either your pericardial or pleural spaces, cancer cells growing on their linings is the most likely reason, but other possible reasons include infection and bleeding. The fluid can be examined under the microscope to find out why it has formed. If it is due to cancer, ways of trying to stop it reforming are the same as for fluid in the abdominal cavity (ascites).
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