September 2025

CARDIOVASCULAR

NORTHWESTERN MEDICINE SURGEONS REMOVE EXTREMELY RARE FOOTBALL-SIZED CANCEROUS TUMOR FROM A HEART

Featuring: Christopher K. Mehta, MD, and Micheal J. Severino, MD

Episode Summary

For several months, 69-year-old patient Michael DiLillo had noticed a slight tenderness in his chest. Several physicians told him it was normal aging, but he wasn’t convinced. He made an appointment with Michael J. Severino, MD, cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, who informed DiLillo that his symptoms were the result of a large mass encroaching into his heart.

“When I saw the test results, I had to take a few minutes and decide how I was going to handle this because it was an earth-shattering result for the patient,” says Dr. Severino. “I’ve been in practice almost 30 years and I’ve never seen this type of tumor in this location.”

The Complexity of Treatment
The tumor was growing into and damaging Michael’s heart. Treatment would require extensive surgery to remove the mass and repair the damage to his heart. Because of the surgery’s complexity and risk, surgeons at other hospitals were unwilling to take it on.

That was until he got to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Michael first saw Samuel S. Kim, MD, thoracic surgeon at Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, who brought his case to the hospital’s tumor board.

The tumor board agreed it would require the expertise of a cardiac surgeon given the damage to the heart, which is when Christopher K. Mehta, MD, cardiac surgeon at Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, was brought into the case. He agreed to operate but warned Michael and his family that it would not come without risk.

“The tumor was invading and compressing the pulmonary valve and the pulmonary artery, which move blood from the heart to the lungs,” says Dr. Mehta. After removing the tumor, the care team would need to reconstruct the heart.

A Rare Cancer, Removed
The surgical team operated for 12 hours, removing the entire tumor then repairing the damage it caused to the structures of his heart, including rebuilding the pulmonary valve.

For Dr. Mehta and team, the relief was shared especially after seeing the tumor’s true size once it was removed. The tumor weighed more than 1.5 pounds, more than double the weight of the average human heart. Following surgery, Michael remained in the ICU for five weeks then transferred to an acute rehab facility for more than two months.

Primary tumors of the heart are extremely rare, and malignant cardiac tumors are even more uncommon. Less than 10% of all primary heart tumors are cancerous, affecting approximately 8,000 people worldwide. By comparison, breast cancer impacts more than 240,000 people each year in the U.S. alone.
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Pathologists found that the tumor was a liposarcoma. “While Michael previously had a liposarcoma in his leg more than 10 years earlier, the pathologist felt this was a primary tumor,” explains Dr. Mehta. “These represent about 1% of cancers of the heart, so it’s a very rare diagnosis."
Christopher K. Mehta, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiac Surgery
Michael J. Severino, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Cardiology

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