Heart and liver transplant recipients are exposed to lung cancer

According to researchers who participated at the second European Lung Cancer Conference, it seems that after receiving a heart or liver transplant, recipients are exposed to a high risk of developing lung cancer. Doctors are advised to screen this type of patients for such cancers, in order to be able to detect the malignancy in time.
Doctors are already aware for decades that the immunosuppressive drugs that they prescribe to transplant patients increase the possibility of developing new cancers. Studies show that the risk of developing a malignant tumor in transplant patients ranges between 4% and 18%, but may even be 100-fold higher than in the general population. After transplantations, the most frequent malignancies are cancers of the skin and lips, Kaposi’s sarcoma or lymphoproliferative disorders.
French researchers have studied, on a recent project, the risk of developing lung cancer in patients who have suffered different types of transplants (solid organs). This is the largest and most important study to date which explores the development of lung cancer in transplant recipients.
The study has been made on 2,831 patients who have received organ transplants at Toulouse Hospital during a certain period: between February 1984 and September 2006. As a result, 0.85% of the transplant patients developed a lung cancer shortly after the intervention.
Dr. Julien Mazieres, the study coordinator, states that after kidney transplants, 10 lung cancers have developed (0.5%), 8 after liver transplants (1.3%) and 6 after heart transplantation (2.8%). He also declared that the difference is statistically significant.
Mazieres said that the high incidence of lung cancer in heart and liver transplant recipients in comparison to kidney transplant recipients may be due to most of these patients having a heavy smoking history. For heart-transplant patients, the average number of packs per year was 75.2, 40 for liver-transplant patients and 28.5 for kidney-transplant recipients.
Researchers claim that transplant recipients must be screened for expected cancers for which early detection and treatment are associated with better prognosis. The statement is particularly true for skin cancers.
Researchers also claim that doctors should also take into account screening for lung cancer. Dr. Mazieres says that a close follow-up including chest examination and X-ray is easy to do and also very useful. As a minimum requirement, physicians who take care of transplant recipients should keep in mind the increased risk of cancer and also integrate this risk factor in their follow-up to improve the survival chance for these patients.