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There is only one emotional punch worse than knowing you have cancer, and you are told that your cancer was from a transplant that was supposed to save your life . This is the situation in which four patients ended up having received kidney, lung, liver and heart transplants from a non-deceased 53-year-old woman who died of a stroke in 2007. Today Only one of these recipients is alive (the recipient's heart died shortly after the transplant, but not because of cancer).
For the lung transplant patient, the problem started a little over a year after the initial procedure. After complaining of feeling sick, the woman underwent a medical examination and it was discovered that she was presenting cancer cells in her lymph nodes. Upon closer examination, these cells were found to be breast cancer from the donor. The cancer managed to metastasize and the woman died one year after being diagnosed.
This triggered major alarms for the organization that had overseen the donor's transplants, and other patients were quickly informed that they were at risk of developing breast cancer. But there was a twist: the cancer screenings of the other patients came back clean at first. It was not until 2011 that the first signs of cancer appeared in liver transplant patients, who refused to undergo another transplant. Despite their treatment, they died in 2014, one year after the left kidney transplant, whose cancer had already spread beyond the kidneys.
This left only the second kidney recipient, a 32-year-old man. Cancer cells were also found in his kidney, but his treatment was effective enough to save his life: the kidney was removed and he started chemotherapy to remove the remaining cancer cells from his body.
According to health professionals, what is disturbing about this case is that the original donor has undergone the same rigorous testing as all organ donors, which includes cancer screening. According to a study conducted on the case, the risk of developing cancer in an organ recipient from a transplanted organ is between 1 and 5 out of 10,000. Despite the tragic circumstances of this case, the director of transplantation Organs at Northwell Health, Dr. Lewis Teperman, says that this should not worry anyone thinking of a transplant: "The supply of organs is incredibly safe."
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