Skin Cancer Risks with Organ Transplants

Patients who have had organ transplants are known to be at a significantly higher risk of skin cancer than their same age counterparts who do not take immune suppressing drugs. But recently there have been a few cases where skin cancer has been transmitted because of the organ that was transplanted and so the new thought is that a person, who has had melanoma, even if they have been cured, should not donate their organs.

Donor Related Cancer

Between the years 1994 and 2001 here have been over a hundred and twenty thousand transplants. Of these a mere twenty-four, only .000197 percent, contracted donor related cancer. Still for those patients, ten of who died, and their families, that was twenty-four too many. This is a very rare instance, and doctors had had thought it even possible. Especially one of the donors had been cured of their melanoma sixteen years before they died and another eight years before their death. Both were multiple organ donors.

Doctors feel now that the melanoma cells had lain inactive in the organs for years, but that once they had been transplanted and the patient began their regimen of taking the immune suppressing drugs that this allowed for the resurgence of the melanoma cells and so the skin cancer was able to resurrect itself.

A Story of a Woman with Cancer

In one case a woman of forty-seven died. Her death was unrelated to cancer. Her family donated both her kidneys, forgetting to mention that sixteen years previously she’d had a minor bout with melanoma. One kidney was given to a man, the other to a woman, both in the fifties. Eighteen months after the transplant the woman was found to have melanoma, only a few months after that so was the man. Medical records were checked and the donor’s history was discovered. The woman died. The man was immediately taken off the immune suppression drugs and the kidney was removed. He was treated for melanoma and survived, though was back on dialysis.

This and another incident where a person donated their organs to four recipients and all of them were eventually diagnosed with skin cancer brings many new concerns to the practice of organ transplants. Potential recipients and their families have reason to be concerned when a life giving operation can turn into an unexpected and unnecessary death. This has lead to some changes in the way organ transplants are handled.

This is being done primarily in the taking of clearer more accurate medical histories on those who are donating organs. One of the problems with this issue is that when someone is willing to donate the organs of a relative who has just passed away. Grateful physicians are very conscious of how emotional that decision is for the family without having to then be questioned on the relative’s earlier medical history. In deference to the family and the recipient sometimes the doctors are in too much of a hurry to save a life to remember to ask about previous medical conditions. This is changing.