Cancer and patients with end-stage renal failure.

Cancer and patients with end-stage renal failure Recipients of renal transplants may acquire cancer by the accidental transplantation of cancer cells with a kidney taken from donors with cancer, by the growth of residual or metastatic tumour in patients with pre-existing malignancy, or by the de-novo formation of neoplasms some time after transplantation.'An increased incidence of de-novo neoplasms has been reported1 2 in patients after renal transplantation, and the main factor responsible is thought to be the prolonged use of immunosuppressive drugs given to prevent rejection.Penn and Starzll reported 75 long-term survivors of organ transplanta- tion who had developed de-novo neoplasms, including 16 of their own patients.The incidence of neoplasia was 80 times greater than in the average population in a comparable age range.Forty-four of the patients had epithelial tumours, including squamous-cell or basal-cell skin carcinoma (11 cases), in-situ carcinoma of the cervix uteri (eight cases), carcinoma