Malignancy after liver transplantation: cumulative risk for development

Solid organ recipients are at high risk to develop malignancies due to the complex interactions of several factors, constituting a major cause of late death after transplantation.

We retrospectively reviewed an historic cohort of adult liver recipients from cadaveric donors (multiorgan recipients excluded) performed from 1986-2002 with a minimum follow-up of 36 months. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to assess cumulative risk to develop malignancy and survival analyses.

Among the 528 patients undergoing orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) with a mean follow-up of 2400 days, 98 developed cancer among which 25% were skin malignancies. Sixty-seven patients developed at least 1 noncutaneous malignancy, an overall incidence of 12.7%. Eighteen percent suffered from posttransplant lymphoproliferative disease; 14%, lung cancer; 4%, Kaposi's sarcoma; 7%, genitourinary malignancies; and 17%, oropharyngeal or laryngeal cancer. The cumulative patient risks to develop noncutaneous malignancies at 5, 10, and 15 years posttransplantation were 9% (confidence interval [CI]: 0.06-0.11), 18% (CI: 0.14-0.23), and 25% (CI: 0.18-0.31), respectively.

OLT recipients are at higher risk to develop malignancies after transplantation, reaching a cumulative risk of 25% at 15 years. Long-term surveillance measures and screening programs must be seriously conducted for selected groups.