A French woman suffering from cystic fibrosis since childhood, died of lung cancer after receiving those organs in a transplant. After a rapid deterioration of its respiratory functions, typical of cystic fibrosis, the doctors decided, in November 2015, to perform a lung transplant. The donor was a smoker. The study published in Lung Cancer, conducted by doctors at University Hospital Montpellier, reveals: "According to the donor database, the transplanted lungs were taken from an 57enne who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day from 30 years." The examinations performed at the time of the donor's brain death had not detected any anomaly, but in June 2017, the transplant patient was found to have cancer, was admitted to thoracic oncology hospital in Montpellier and died two months later, without possibility of cure. According to the study, the symptoms clearly remind those caused by smoking. "The short time frame between lung transplantation and the appearance of the first radiological anomaly suggests that carcinogenesis, the process that transforms normal cells into cancerous cells, began during the life of the donor," the study authors continued. Cancer would have grown at an abnormal rate, due to immunosuppressive treatments that the transplanted woman took to avoid organ rejection. "Given the relatively long latency time of lung cancer, we propose that transplants from smoking or recently discontinued donors are considered with caution," said the doctors. Opportunity or increased risk? The growing gap between the number of patients awaiting transplantation and the available organs continues to be the biggest limitation to transplant expansion, he comments Giovanni D'Agata, president of the "Rights Window". Despite a potential risk of disease transmission and this study that warns about the risk of transplanting these organs, the transplant outcomes with organs from "abnormal" donors was not associated with the reduction in survival of the organ and of the patient
