![Organ donation: four recipients from the same donor develop cancer](https://img.passeportsante.net/1000x526/2018-09-24/i86145-.jpeg)
September 24, 2018.
In Europe, several patients who received organs from the same donor all developed the same cancer. Three died a few months or years later.
Organ donor infects four patients
If organ donation saves tens of thousands of lives each year around the world, it can also be fatal, as shown in this account, published in theAmerican Journal of Transplantation. This story begins in 2007, when a European woman dies from a stroke.
This patient is an organ donor and the transplant process begins. Kidneys, lungs, liver and heart are analyzed and found to be in good condition for donation. The patients chosen were all transplanted successfully, and yet, 16 months after the first operation, the patient who had received the lungs from the donor developed a sudden cancer from which she died a few months later.
Three in four patients die from the same cancer
Six and seven years after the transplant, history repeats itself as patients who received a kidney and donor liver also die of cancer. Both have the same form of tumor, which has grown throughout the body. The fourth patient is not spared. She also develops cancer from which she will survive.
In front of this strange coincidence, extensive scientific analyzes are carried out and the doctors end up concluding that this cancer did indeed come from the donor. Microscopic metastases, invisible by medical imaging, had spread to his organs and naturally infected the recipients. For the authors of this study, although this coincidence is as rare as it is extraordinary, these early signs of cancer could eventually be detected to avoid possible complications.
Gaelle Latour
Read also What are the most transplanted organs?