A 41-year-old man in California died less than a year after receiving a liver transplant, contracting cancer from the deceased donor. Initially in need of a transplant due to chronic liver disease, he received a liver from a 63-year-old donor with undetected lung cancer. Although tests showed no cancer before the transplant, an autopsy revealed metastatic lung adenocarcinoma. The recipient underwent a second transplant to remove the cancer but developed symptoms months later, leading to a diagnosis of the same type of cancer. Despite planned chemotherapy, he passed away shortly after hospitalization, marking this case as a rare instance of donor-mediated cancer transmission.
A man who received a life-saving liver transplant died less than a year later from cancer he contracted from the donor.
The anonymous 41-year-old patient from California had chronic liver disease and received a transplant from a deceased donor in 2001, but was later found to have undetected lung cancer.
Despite surgeons performing a second emergency transplant to remove the disease, the recipient died a year later from the same lung cancer as the first donor.
“Apparently, the tumor cells escaped from the confines of the transplanted liver and gained access to the systemic circulation within a week after transplantation,” doctors involved in the case wrote in their report.
They added that despite removing the original organ and having the recipient undergo a second transplant, this situation is “the first case of donor-mediated cancer transmission in the literature.”
And this case is one of the few in the United States where cancer has spread between organ donor and recipient.
Doctors believe cancer cells too small to be detected by scans migrated from the donor’s lungs to his liver, explaining why his organ was declared cancer-free and safe for transplant. I’m going to do it.
A 41-year-old man underwent a second liver transplant after the donor of the first was found to have lung cancer (pictured)
This patient originally required a liver transplant because he developed type B cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is a chronic liver disease in which healthy tissue in the liver is replaced by scar tissue, resulting in decreased function.
The donor was a 63-year-old man who died of a stroke but had no history of cancer. Laboratory tests performed before the transplant revealed no signs of cancer in the donor’s liver, lungs, or chest.
However, when the donor’s autopsy was performed the day after the surgery, a tumor was discovered in his lung.
He was posthumously diagnosed with metastatic lung adenocarcinoma, or lung cancer that had spread to the area between the lungs in the chest.
Following the autopsy findings, doctors re-enrolled the patient for another liver test, which was performed seven days later.
He recovered uneventfully from the surgery.
The patient was doing well for several weeks after the second surgery, but due to cancer in the donor, a CT scan 10 months after the transplant showed no signs of cancer in the chest, abdomen, or pelvis. I didn’t.
However, six weeks after the scan, the recipient developed abdominal pain, vomiting, and bloating.
Blood tests, fluid analysis, and a physical examination revealed metastatic lung adenocarcinoma, the same type as the original donor.
And it’s likely that immunosuppressive drugs given to patients to prevent organ rejection accelerated the cancer, allowing it to grow and spread more easily, making it even more deadly.
Chemotherapy was prescribed and was scheduled to begin in a few weeks, but a month after diagnosis, the man developed fluid buildup and a blood clot in his leg.
The man was admitted to hospital for treatment, but died within 24 hours.
Sample B shows tumor cells from the donor’s right lung, and square C shows characteristics of the recipient’s tumor cells, which have “characteristics similar to the donor’s tumor cells.”
Analysis of donor and recipient cancers “confirmed that the original donor was the source of the malignancy.”
In a case report published in the Journal of Liver Transplantation, doctors wrote that their analysis of tumor cells from both donor and recipient “showed striking similarities to lung adenocarcinoma in donor 1.” I’m writing.
The recipient’s tumor cells had “identical” characteristics as donor 1’s lung tumor.
Further tests revealed that the cancer “originated from Donor 1, not from Donor 2 or the recipient himself.”
Cases of “transplant” cancer are extremely rare and there are no statistics on this subject. Only a small number of sporadic cases have been recorded in the medical literature.
A 2013 review of these cases published in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine stated that there was no estimate of the risk of cancer transmission from donor to recipient, and data on the subject were limited.
“The incidence of cancer transmission is so low that sporadic case reports are the main source of information,” the report’s authors wrote.
An earlier review in 1993 that looked at data from the 1970s also found that there were only “sporadic” reports of cancer being transmitted through organ donation.
The 2013 review added: “The infrequency of cancer and the highly variable stages make a definitive risk calculation impossible.”
However, the authors continued, this data “very likely underestimates the true incidence.”
Using the limited data available, the authors of the 2013 report concluded that cancers known to have been transmitted from donor to recipient at least once include breast cancer, colon cancer, They discovered that he had liver cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, and kidney cancer. cancer.
