Survey About the Cancer Risk of Renal Transplant Recipients

There is a greater risk of malignant tumors developing in kidney transplant patients. Due to this, early detection is of outmost importance, in which screening tests play an important role.

We have conducted a survey among renal transplant recipients to assess individual risk factors.

Of 530 respondents, 55 developed post-transplantation tumors. Cutaneous tumors (36%) and kidney cancer (16%) were the most frequent. In total, 59% of recipients were over the age of 50, 61.7% were over the normal body-mass index range, 40.3% smoked or used to smoke, and 21.8% had diabetes. Five patients had hepatitis B virus and 11 were hepatitis C virus-positive. Malignancies developed significantly more frequent in men than in women (P = .04). The progressing of age (P = .0001) and the time elapsed after transplantation (P < .01) also were associated with a significant increase in the occurrence of post-transplantation tumors.

We have created a database to facilitate a more personalized and efficient screening program for immunocompromised patients.