A high incidence of cancer was reported following organ transplantation. This study explores the incidence, types and outcome of cancer in renal transplant (KTx) recipients the medical records of 1290 recipients who received grafts between May 1972 and December 2005 were retrospectively reviewed. Of these, 785 were males and 119 were under the age of 18 years. Donors were 1046 living and 244 cadaveric.
64 instances of cancer were diagnosed in 58 recipients at 4 to 288 months (m) [mean 85 m] after KTx, with a disease incidence of 4.9%. Recipients with cancer were 34 males and 24 females, aged 15 to 66 years at the time of KTx. Kidney grafts were obtained from 49 living donors and 9 cadaveric donors. Histopathological types were: 16 cases of post-transplantation lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD), 9 cases of Kaposi' sarcoma, 7 cases of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), 7 cases of breast carcinoma, and 25 less common lesions. We observed: (1) Incidence was not influenced by recipient age, gender or donor source, (2) PTLD was the commonest type, (3) mean time to appearance was 19 m in Kaposi’s sarcoma, 84 m in PTLD, and 148 m in SCC. Eighteen (31%) patients are alive with functioning graft, for 11 – 184 m after cancer diagnosis (Dx), one (1.7%) lost follow-up, with functioning graft, 109 m after Dx, five (8.6%) lost graft, 1- 54 m after Dx, and are back on dialysis, and 34 (58.6%) patients died with functioning graft 4 days to 62 m after Dx. [1] A lower incidence of cancer was observed in this study group. [2] cancer appeared as early as 3 months or as late as 288 months after KTx. [3] Post transplantation malignancy was associated with poor patient and graft survival rates.