She receives the lungs of a smoker and catches a cancer

The donor's lungs, which had been smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 30 years, showed no abnormalities before the transplant.

The case is as rare as it is unfortunate. A 39-year-old woman, followed since childhood for cystic fibrosis, developed a cancer two years after being grafted with the lungs of a smoker, say French doctors in the review Lung Cancer published this October, quoted by The world.

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The donor, a 57-year-old woman, smoked the equivalent of 20 cigarettes a day for 30 years. At the time of the transplant, however, the medical examinations revealed no abnormalities in the transplanted lungs.

Grafts to consider with "caution"

But when she is admitted to hospital two years later with fever and respiratory failure, the transplanted patient pbades a chest radiograph showing several pulmonary foci. A biopsy then establishes the presence of a cancerous tumor in which a genetic mutation usually linked to smoking is discovered.

Cancer has also developed particularly fast, which Professor Jean-Louis Pujol and his colleagues in the department of thoracic oncology and the medical imaging department of Arnaud Hospital in Villeneuve de Montpellier explain by the treatment immunosuppressant followed by the patient to prevent rejection of the transplant. A finding that pushes doctors to ask for "caution" about "pulmonary transplants from donors who were active smokers".