Four patients fell ill after receiving transplants of lung, liver, left kidney and right kidney contaminated with cancer cells.
The story reported by the American Journal of Transplantation may be exceptional, it is cold in the back. Four patients fell ill after receiving transplants of lung, liver, left kidney and right kidney contaminated with cancer cells. Only one woman survived.
In 2007, a 53-year-old woman died of a stroke. Full of good intentions, his relatives authorize the donation of his organs. Four patients will benefit from it in Europe. After careful tissue analysis, no abnormalities are detected.
Three deaths
But sixteen months later, the patient who received the lungs from the donor is hospitalized with problems. His tests reveal the presence of cancer cells in the lymph nodes. At only 42 years old, the patient died a few months later, without anyone establishing a link between her transplant and her cancer.
It is the repetition of the same scenario that will put doctors on alert. A few years later, a 62-year-old patient with a left kidney transplant contracted a malignant tumor and died. In 2014, a third patient, this time with a liver transplant, succumbed to the same cancer. In each case, the disease spreads throughout the body as a metastasis, making treatment impossible. Only the patient with a sick right kidney transplant will survive, following heavy chemotherapy and the removal of her new organ.
Micro-metastases
How was such a transplant possible? In fact, at the time of the donation, the organs were only affected by micro-metastases, undetectable at the time. Normally, to avoid contamination, people who have already contracted cancer cannot donate their organs after death (with rare exceptions). This keeps the risk of transmission from an infected organ to a very low level, between 0.01% and 0.05%.
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