Organ recipients with previous cancers have higher rates of mortality, new cancers

Editor's Note

In this meta-analysis, organ recipients who had cancer before receiving an organ transplant had higher rates of mortality and new cancers than organ recipients who had not had cancer.

Organ recipients with previous cancers had a 1.5 times greater risk of dying from any cause, 3 times higher risk of dying from cancer, and nearly 2 times higher risk of developing a new cancer.

The meta-analysis included 32 studies involving nearly 400,000 patients in 12 countries.

The critical shortage of organs for transplant means clinicians and policy makers must ensure scarce organs are given to the patients who would benefit the most, the authors say.

Background: Solid organ transplant recipients (SOTR) with a pretransplant malignancy (PTM) are at increased risk for cancer recurrence. However, it is unclear whether differences in survival and incidence of posttransplant de novo malignancies exist between recipients with PTM and those without PTM. We designed a systematic review to synthesize all available evidence assessing these outcomes.