In an unprecedented medical case, a surgeon contracted cancer while operating on a patient with a rare form of the disease. The medic inadvertently “transplanted” the cancer to himself when cells from his patient’s tumour entered his system through a cut on his hand.
The incident occurred during an operation on a 32 year old man from Germany who was undergoing removal of a tumour in his abdomen. The unfortunate occurrence happened as the 53 year old surgeon sustained a cut on his hand while inserting a drain into the patient.
Even though he promptly disinfected and dressed the wound, he discovered a firm 1.2inch lump on his middle finger approximately five months later. Upon visiting a specialist, it was revealed that the growth was a malignant tumour with the same genetic makeup as that of his patient’s cancer.
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Doctors deduced that he contracted the cancer after the patient’s tumour cells infiltrated the cut during surgery. This case is considered exceptional since the human body typically rejects foreign tissues in a transplant-like scenario, which didn’t happen in the surgeon’s case, reports the Mirror.
This led the doctors to speculate that there might have been an “ineffective antitumour immune response” in his body, allowing the tumour to take hold and grow. The case, first reported in 1996 and recently resurfaced with renewed interest, was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
It detailed the “accidental transplantation” of a patient’s malignant fibrous histiocytoma – an ultra rare cancer with only 1,400 diagnoses reported annually. Despite the initial surgery being successful, the patient sadly passed away due to complications post-procedure. Meanwhile, the doctor’s tumour was removed and found to be a malignant fibrous histiocytoma under microscopic examination.
The treating physician questioned if the tumours were related, and subsequent tests confirmed they were “identical”, with matching cell types and arrangements. The authors noted in their report: “Normally, transplantation of allogeneic tissue from one person to another induces an immune response that leads to the rejection of the transplanted tissue. In the case of the surgeon, an intense inflammatory reaction developed in the tissue surrounding the tumour, but the tumour mass increased, suggesting an ineffective antitumour immune response.”
They also speculated that the tumour “escaped immunologic destruction through several mechanisms”, including a failure in the surgeon’s body to detect and attack tumour cells effectively. Post-tumour removal, there were no indications of the cancer returning or spreading in the surgeon.