Why do some patients suffer from skin cancer after transplantation?
Malignancy may be developed due to chronic use of immunosuppression drugs and rarely from receiving transmitted malignant cells with the donor organ. The malignancies are Lymphoproliferative of the Epstein-Barr virus type or B-Cell hyperplasias. Cancers are an unfortunate consequence of chronic immunosuppression. In general, transplant recipients have a threefold increase in the incidence in various cancers when compared with age-matched controls. Some specific cancers are more than 100 times more frequent in immunosuppressed patients than in the general population. For all tumours, the average time of appearance of the cancer after transplantation is 58 months. The most common tumours among transplant patients are those of the skin and lips, non-Hodgkin lymphomas, Kaposi sarcomas, and uterine, cervical, vulval, and perineal cancers.
