Surgeon contracts cancer from patient during surgery in unprecedented medical case
The 53-year-old surgeon accidentally 'transplanted' the cancer into himself when his patient's tumour cells seeped into a cut on his hand during the operation
In a unique and unprecedented event, a surgeon operating on a cancer patient ended up contracting the deadly disease himself.
The doctor was performing surgery on a 32-year-old German man suffering from a rare type of cancer when he accidentally "transplanted" the disease into his own body.
This occurred when cells from the patient's tumour seeped into a cut on the surgeon's hand during the procedure. Despite immediate disinfection and bandaging of the wound, the 53-year-old medic noticed a hard lump developing at the base of his middle finger five months later.
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A visit to a hand specialist revealed that the lump was a malignant tumour, genetically identical to the cancer his former patient had. Doctors treating him concluded that he had contracted the cancer when the patient's tumour cells entered his bloodstream through the cut.
The case report authors labelled the situation as unusual since the body typically rejects foreign tissue during a traditional transplant, and the same would have been expected in this case. They concluded that the surgeon's body had an "ineffective antitumour immune response", given the development and growth of the tumour.
The case, which was originally reported in 1996 and has since 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 each year, reports the Mirror.
Despite the initial surgery being successful, the patient sadly passed away due to complications post-procedure. Meanwhile, the doctor's tumour was removed and examined, revealing it was also a malignant fibrous histiocytoma.
The physician who treated both individuals questioned if the tumours were related, before discovering they were "identical", with the same types of cells and arrangement. In their report, the authors noted: "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 theorised that the tumour "escaped immunologic destruction through several mechanisms", including a failure in the surgeon's body to detect and attack tumour cells effectively.
After the tumour was removed, there were no signs of the cancer returning or spreading in the surgeon.
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