Solid Organ Transplant patients at higher risk of early death from cancer

CBC reported that people who received lung, liver and other solid organs already had a higher risk for cancer.

Physicians have been aware that transplant patients are more likely to get cancer, Baxter said, but it wasn’t known whether these patients are at greater risk of actually dying from their cancer.

In order to reach the finings, the researchers identified around 11,061 patients who had received solid organ transplants in Ontario, Canada between the year 1991 and 2010.

In that study, the team found that transplant recipients had an increased risk for developing 32 different types of cancer, with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma being elevated more than sevenfold in transplant recipients. The transplanted organs include kidney, heart, liver, etc., over the period of 20 years.

Principal researcher Dr. Nancy Baxter, a cancer surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, said drugs used to suppress the immune system to prevent organ rejection likely contribute to a higher rate of cancer, which is also often harder to treat in transplant patients.

“It was also quite unexpected to see that the risk of cancer mortality was higher than that of the general population in older transplant recipients, and that the risk of cancer death was not limited to long-term survivors”, Baxter added. “Addressing the cancer burden in SOTRs is critical to improving the survival of these patients”, researchers wrote. Previous studies on organ transplants and cancer incidence were smaller in scope, and typically looked only at kidney transplant recipients.

Among all transplant recipients, lung cancer was the top cancer killer, as it is in the general population, says Baxter.

Skin cancer was the most common cause of cancer-related death among the patients who participated in the study, reports CBC. In 2011, researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) evaluated the medical data of more than 1750,000 transplant recipients.

Excluding patients who have had malignancies before the operation, experts found that the risks of dying from cancer were still twice than that of the general population.

While the study did not conclusively determine a link between cancer deaths and organ transplants, scientists hope that further research will provide new insights into improvements for cancer treatment for transplant recipients. Mortality and cause of death were ascertained by record linkage between the Canadian Organ Replacement Register, the Ontario Cancer Registry, and the Office of the Registrar General of Ontario death database. Non-melanoma skin cancer accounted for 3% of the cancer-related deaths. According to her, healthcare providers must focus on cancer screening and prevention.

Baxter and her colleagues have also stated that patients who have undergone SOTs must opt for a modified and customized approach to cancer screening as some organized screening programs have flaws.

Main Outcomes and Measures Cancer mortality for SOTRs was compared with that of the general population using standardized mortality ratios (SMRs).

Cancer was the second-leading cause of death for patients, after heart-related causes.