Elsevier

Transplantation Proceedings

Volume 34, Issue 5, August 2002, Pages 1780-1781
Transplantation Proceedings

Renal transplantation
Immunosuppression and merkel cell cancer

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0041-1345(02)03065-8Get rights and content

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Materials and methods

We conducted a retrospective review of all de novo MCC cases reported to the Israel Penn International Transplant Tumor Registry (IPITTR) from the United States or International centers between 1968 and 2000. Demographics were analyzed and survival analysis were calculated by Kaplan-Meir.

Results

Forty-eight cases of MCC in 45 transplant recipients were reported to the IPITTR from the transplant community. Patients were transplanted between 1968 and 1994 and were subsequently diagnosed with MCC between 1976 and 1997. Age at the time of diagnosis, MCC ranged from 19 to 67 (mean 47.0 ± 12.1) years. Of the 45 patients, 22 (49%) were less than 50 years old at time of MCC diagnosis. The majority of patients were Caucasian (80%) and male (69%). Transplanted organs consisted primarily of

Discussion

The incidence of MCC appears to be dramatically higher in the transplant population than in the general population. The ratio of posttransplant melanoma to MCC is 6 to 1, compared with 65 to 1 in the general population.3 Moreover, in contrast to the general population where MCC primarily affects the elderly, 49% were less than 50 years old at time of MCC diagnosis. These findings are similar to other skin cancer data in transplant recipients that have shown that skin cancers occur an average of

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