The Spanish National Transplant Organization (ONT) tumor registry

It is important to know the actual risk of tumor transmission from donor to recipient and the serious consequences for the recipient. Tumor registries can help us to improve our knowledge about this problem.

We have studied all the donors registered in the Spanish National Transplant Organization from January 1, 1990, to December 31, 2006, and especially the donors with a malignant tumor as well as the recipients who have received an organ from these donors.

We found 117 donors with a malignant tumor (5.8 per 1000 donors). One hundred fifty-five recipients were transplanted with an organ from these donors. The average age (SD) of donors with tumor was 53 (17) years. The most frequent cause of death was cerebral stroke in 81 donors. Donors with tumor are older than donors without tumor. The cause of death was cerebral stroke more frequently in donors with tumor than donors without tumor. Twenty-two of the recipients who received an organ from a donor with a tumor are dead. In 7 of these 22 recipients the death was cancer-related. Only 13 of the 100 recipients studied developed a malignant tumor, and only 10 of these tumors were donor-related.

The profile of a donor who could have a tumor was most frequently an elderly person who had died of a cerebral stroke. In our experience, the risk of tumor transmission from donors to recipients is low and depends on the aggressiveness of the donor tumor.