In 2007, a 53-year-old woman died of a stroke. Her name and nationality were not disclosed.
After her death, her lungs, kidneys, heart and liver were transplanted to five patients. Over the next 6 years, four of them contracted cancer and three of them died.
The fifth received extensive sepsis after a heart transplant and also died.
This unusual case was reported in a recent issue of the American Journal of Transplantology.
According to experts, the chance of contracting cancer from an organ donor is about 1 in 10,000. With four infected, it does seem like some kind of ominous bad luck.
The deceased donor woman was not diagnosed with cancer during her lifetime, and now it is impossible to know whether it could have been detected immediately after her death. According to experts, this is the first time they are faced with such an extraordinary situation.
Specialists from medical universities in Germany and the Netherlands conducted an extensive investigation and found out all the details of the incident. At the same time, they continue to argue that the screening of donors during transplantation is carried out very carefully and that the risk of contracting a dangerous disease is negligible.
The first to receive organ donation was a man who had a heart transplant. He died shortly after of extensive sepsis, so the doctors did not sound the alarm.
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Then cancer was diagnosed in a 42-year-old woman who received donor lungs. A little over a year after the transplant, the woman was hospitalized due to the fact that her lungs began to work poorly. And during the examination, the doctors suddenly revealed cancer in the patient.
They found that the cancer first grew in the lungs, which was the reason for their poor performance, and then metastases went to the mammary glands. The treatment did not help, the metastases continued to the liver and in 2009 the woman died.
Immediately after her death, doctors found and warned of the risk of a 62-year-old woman who received a left kidney and a 32-year-old man who received a right kidney. Both were examined for cancer and found nothing.
But in 2011, a man with a right kidney transplant was admitted to the hospital with pain and diagnosed with kidney cancer. His affected kidney was removed, after which he underwent chemotherapy and since 2012 has been declared the winner of cancer.
The woman with the left kidney was less fortunate. Her cancer started in the liver, from there it spread to both kidneys, bones and gastrointestinal tract. The woman died two months after the diagnosis.
The fourth patient, who developed cancer after transplantation, was a 59-year-old woman who received a new liver as it had been destroyed by cirrhosis. Cancer in her liver was discovered in 2011 and she was immediately offered to remove this organ, but the woman was afraid that they would not find a replacement for her and refused the operation. After further complications, she died in 2014.