Organs from donors with primary brain malignancy: the fate of cardiac allograft recipients.
BACKGROUND
The phenomenon of malignancy transmission from donors with primary brain malignancy (PBM) which is relatively well documented in renal or liver transplant recipients, has not been analyzed in cardiac allograft recipients.


METHODS
We reviewed the medical records of 32 cardiac allograft recipients who were transplanted with organs from donors suffering from primary brain malignancies from 1989 to 2003.


RESULTS
No case of donor-transmitted malignancy has been reported with a mean follow-up of 80.6 months.


CONCLUSIONS
In our experience as well as according to a review of the literature, the risk of tumor transmission from donors with primary brain malignancy to cardiac allograft recipients seems to be extremely low. In the context of the increased donor shortage, we recommend to accept all suitable cardiac allografts harvested from donors with primary brain malignancy provided there are no detectable remote metastases.
Hornik
L
L
Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Heart Center North Rhine-Westphalia, Ruhr University of Bochum, Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. lhornik@hdz-nrw.de
Tenderich
G
G
Wlost
S
S
Zittermann
A
A
Minami
K
K
Koerfer
R
R
D001344:Autopsy; D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000473:pathology*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006338:Heart Neoplasms / Q000556:secondary; D016027:Heart Transplantation / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013997:Time Factors; D014019:Tissue Donors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous