Brain Tumors Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Brain Tumors, including details on symptoms, benign and malignant tumors, gliomas, screening, treatment.

Organs from donors with primary brain malignancy: the fate of cardiac allograft recipients.

Hornik L, Tenderich G, Wlost S, Zittermann A, Minami K, Koerfer R

Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Heart Center North Rhine-Westphalia, Ruhr University of Bochum, Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. lhornik@hdz-nrw.de

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.

Published 2 February 2005 in Transplant Proc, 36(10): 3133-7.
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