4 get cancer from teen’s donated organs
 

This is horrible!

4 get cancer from teen’s donated organs

15-year-old died from rare form of lymphoma that wasn’t found till autopsy

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - Alex Koehne had a love for life, and always wanted to help people.

So when his parents were told that their 15-year-old son was dying of bacterial meningitis, the couple didn't hesitate in donating his organs to desperately ill transplant recipients.

"I immediately said, 'Let's do it'," Jim Koehne recalled. "We both thought it was a great idea. This is who Alex was."

A year later, their dream that Alex's spirit might somehow live on has become a nightmare.

Autopsy discovery
It turned out that Alex did not die of bacterial meningitis, but rather a rare form of lymphoma that wasn't found until his autopsy, and apparently spread to the organ recipients. The Long Island couple was told that two of the recipients have died, and two others had the donor kidneys removed and are getting cancer treatment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24001110

I literally just read that. That's crazy! :eek:

What a shitty time for this article. (not directed at you, Peppy)

April is National Donate Life Month.

Oh my goodness that is so horrible.

But I did not think cancer could be contagious. Although if the organs had cancerous cells, and they kept multiplying inside the recipient's body, then that is the only possibility for this to have happened.

Yes, that's what happened - the organs were already cancerous or pre-cancerous. Lymphoma is passed throughout the body's lymph nodes, and that frequently passes to nearby organs.

I remember reading about something like this with some other disease. What it was I can't remember, but it was something serious. Honestly, they need to know these things. How can they figure it out in the autopsy and not tell people sooner? These people wanted a chance to live, not to die of something else. How sad.

According to the article, the transplant recipients were all notified of this as soon as the autopsy revealed that it was lymphoma.

The recipients are talking about suing. Can you imagine the strain on the system which would occur if the standard of care became that all organs would be tested for cancer (and whatever else) prior to being used? I would think a policy like that would kill more people than it saved.

Very sad for these four victims, but this seems like an inherent risk in that sort of procedure (although a very remote risk).

The problem could have probably just as easily been something like AIDS. Docs, correct me if I'm in left field here.

If the donor had bacterial meningitis, would that pass through the organs to the recipient as well? Seems like if that was his diagnosis that should have kept him from being a donor (I admit I don't know much about bacterial meningitis, except that it's bad news).

PsychTau

I'm pretty sure that bacterial meningitis only affects the fluid in the spinal cord and around the brain. Other organs would not be affected (besides being dead).

That is terrible and so sad for the parents of the boy and all those families who have been affected by this.

This is correct. There are NO guarantees with donated organs that something wont happen down the line or that the recipient's body wont reject them years later. The risk of the body rejecting the new organ is much much greater than contracting a disease from them. It is a remote risk. It's like contracting HIV with blood transfusions. The probability is quite low these days but risk of HIV and other blood borne illnesses will always be there as well as a deadly reaction to the donor's blood itself. A patient can die within hours or less with a blood transfusion reaction and there isnt much that can really be done about it should it occur. It's a risk you assume when you sign consent.

While I certainly feel for the recipients and the losses/stresses their families are enduring i think it is shitty to have a lawsuit. Who are you going to sue? The donor's dead. Sue his parents? For what? For trying to save lives of others? Sue the hospital or the donor agency? I'll give the hospital and the donor agency the benefit of the doubt that all precautions and testing were performed completely and accurately until proven otherwise.

There was a case recently in which several people were put at risk or contracted HIV from organ transplants. In that case, someone (I can't remember if it was a doctor, a member of the transplant team or what) lied to one of the patients about the organ donor's risk factors. For that, I think a suit is warranted, but in general cases in which no one knew any more than anyone else, risk of diseases for which there may be no timely test may just be a risk that comes with transplanted organs that the patient has to assume.

In the HIV case, the woman who received a kidney was doing fine on dialysis and could have waited for a different donor.

So, could someone get cancer from blood transfusions?

Short answer? No.

Long answer? There are certain viruses that can cause types of cancer (African EBV and HTLV-1 come to mind). I don't know if these are screened for by blood banks (and am frankly too lazy to look it up :p). Does anyone else know?