"This just in. John McCain is still dead."
Posted on 09/17/2018 7:26:25 AM PDT by BenLurkin
It's well known that organ transplants can pass infectious diseases from donors to recipients in rare cases. But even more rarely, transplants can transmit cancer, as a new case shows.
In what's being described as an "extraordinary case," four people in Europe developed breast cancer after they received organs from the same donor, according to a new report.
Three of the patients died from the cancer, which underscores the "often-fatal consequences of donor-derived breast cancer," the authors wrote in their report, published in the July issue of the American Journal of Transplantation
Passing cancer through an organ transplant is "a very, very uncommon event," said Dr. Lewis Teperman, director of organ transplantation at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, New York, who was not involved in the case.
Indeed, transplant recipients have a chance of between 1 in 10,000 and 5 in 10,000 of this happening, according to the report.
"The organ supply is incredibly safe," Teperman told Live Science. That's because organ donors undergo rigorous screening, including family history for disease, such as cancer, and multiple laboratory tests. In this case, the 53-year-old donor underwent a physical exam as well as an ultrasound of the abdomen and heart, a chest X-ray, and an examination of the airways.
Still, even with these robust procedures in place, "it's impossible to screen everything," and there's a very small chance that a donor will have an undetected disease that could be transmitted, Teperman said.
In the current case, the patient had an undetected breast cancer. The donor may have had "micro metastases" or groups of cancer cells that spread from the original cancer site but are too small to be detected with screening or imaging tests, the report said.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Unless something was missed that would have made the diagnosis of breast cancer in the donor obvious, it's not anyone’s ‘fault’. If only a few cells had metastasized to the donor organs prior to transplantation, there's really no way to detect this. My only question is whether or not she had a significantly advanced primary tumor in the breast that could have been picked up by exam. For female donors, and given the frequency of breast cancer, it should probably be standard procedure to do a careful breast examination - if not mammography.
Tell me this - Someone dies in a car accident; they harvest the organs while they are still viable. How in heck can they test this donor extensively in the 10 minutes it takes to harvest the organs? I’m calling bs.
1 in 2000 is a .05% risk..that is very low risk.
Your odds of developing Cancer sometime in your lifetime are about 1 in 3.
So lets not play games and try to pretend 1 in 2000 is high risk.
That's certainly true. In the case of organ recipients, however, the situation is already not good. The alternative is basically to die. I think I'd play the odds and take the surgery under those circumstances.
Now for elective things, nope. Never getting cut unless it's really really necessary.
You want to buy a car that blows up 1 in 2,000 times you drive it? You want to fly in a plane that crashes 1 in 2,000 flights?
No, you don’t. That’s because 1 in 2,000 odds are pretty darned high.
Metastasis is cells breaking loose into the bloodstream and taking hold elsewhere in the body, forming new cancerous tumors. So, if the primary tumor is breast cancer, then the secondary ones would result from that same cancer. Sounds odd, yes, but that’s what happens.
Apples and oranges.
Your odds of death 100% with no transplant
Your odds of cancer in your like 1 in 3
Odds of getting cancer from a transplant 1 in 2000
That’s insanely low.
Your odds of having a child with Down syndrome (1 in 700) is far more likely than that.. so by your reasoning no one should have children.
A .05% risk is insanely low.
OK, your take on statistical probability is different from mine.
But, answer this: why did the author of this feel the need to disguise 1 in 2,000 as 5 in 10,000?
Because it looked better. This is marketing hype. Why is marketing hype necessary? Why the dishonesty?
That’s my problem, here. I’ve already said someone at death’s door is going to roll the dice on those odds, who wouldn’t.
You want to buy a car that blows up 1 in 2,000 times you drive it? You want to fly in a plane that crashes 1 in 2,000 flights?
No, you don’t. That’s because 1 in 2,000 odds are pretty darned high.
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Except when you are sitting on a rocket that is going to blow at very soon and certainly within the year
Yes, it makes sense when it’s explained, just not something that had crossed my mind before.
“The organ supply is incredibly safe”
Obviously . . .
Why did the author do what they did? Well honestly most journalists are IDIOTS... they aren’t engineers, they are piss poor at math, and they are LAZY.... They parrot what they are told, so if they are told 5 in 10,000 that’s what theyi’ll write.. they won’t reduce it.
You seem to be confusing scale and scope with our comments about risk.
You want to use Engineering type risk, then a more accurate comparison would be, what’s the odds of you getting a lemon vehicle?
Would you consider that to be a high risk? Obviously if the risk is too high companies would go out of business... yet your odds of getting a lemon right off the assembly line from some of the worlds premier auto makers is HIGHER, and at some points MUCH higher than .05% risk of cancer from a transplant. Don’t believe me? feel free to check it out
https://lemonlawexperts.com/study-lemon-law-claims-data-us/
.05% is an insanely low risk. As I stated by your reasoning no one should have children, for the risk of Downs Syndrome.
No one should ever have any surgery, because your risk of death from complications due to surgery surgery is .07%!
Don’t believe me? Here you go:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6137a6.htm
You seem to have a completely unrealistic belief in what is high or low risk, particularly when it comes to events in your everyday life.
The risk of contracting cancer from a transplant is LOWER than dying from a general surgical complication! PERIOD.
1 in 2,000 is not “extraordinary.” 1 in 2,000 will be quite common across the totality of transplant surgeries worldwide. My objection is to lack of candor and resorting to a sell job, marketing hype.
Regarding the risk of having a Down Syndrome child, that risk is heightened with age, and medical professionals hype that risk in the opposite direction to the point of advising abortion, I know, my own sister experienced that. Again, marketing hype. My niece is was a beautiful, healthy, normal baby and is now 15 years old.
The risk of death from even anaesthesia is greatly under-appreciated, and it it were understood more fully I believe a fair amount of elective surgery would cease to occur.
Again, you keep trying to spin.
If the general death rate from complications of ALL surgeries (and yes some surgeries are more risky than others) is .07%, then risk of cancer from transplant is .05%, that’s a lower risk than general complications across the board.
As I stated before, Your likelihood of buying a lemon car from a top auto manufacturer is about twice the risk of getting cancer from a transplant... Would you believe that the risk of getting a lemon car is high??? If it is, how do these companies stay in business?
Just because you can find an example of something that is lower risk, does not mean that something else is innately high risk... All you are proving is that it is higher risk than something else, whether that something else has any relevance or not.
As to your down syndrome example.. I can personally counter your assumptions. My wife and I had a child in our early 40s, and at no time did ANYONE even broach the topic of termination. In fact, today they can genetically test the child for genetic issues with relatively high probability without amnio, they actually can extract the child’s DNA from within the mothers blood, so no need for Amnio or the risk associated with it... Oh and for the record, the odds of someone my wifes age having a child with Down’s Syndrome, was about 1-2%, which for the record is 40-80 times higher a risk than catching Cancer from a transplant.. but you claim a 1-2% risk is them overselling the risk, while .05% is them underselling... you can’t have it both ways... By your reasoning 2% is INSANELY high risk, if you are claiming .05 isn’t low risk... yet here you are claiming its not high risk... make up your mind.
Risk is only meaningful when compared to other relevant things... and in medicine, particularly surgery, an .05% risk is very low risk. Is it as low as other things? Nope, can always find something less risky... no matter what it is.. but to say that .05% is not low risk is comically naive when it comes to medicine, let alone a surgical procedure as complicated as organ transplantation.
Last numbers I saw, roughly 5% of folks who get a transplant die within a year of their surgery. 5%, thats a full 100 times more risky than getting cancer from the transplanted organ. To know this, and to claim .05% is high risk is just fool hearty.
My post was more specific to the fact that immune suppressant drugs puts a recipient at a greater risk of cancer. Our understanding is that each candidate is graded and placed accordingly. There are tests run on every aspect of their health, days of them. If a person is diabetic, poor kidney function, abnormal liver function, current smokers, thirty pound weight differential etc. they do not qualify for placement until or when the issue is resolved and then they are graded. I can’t speak to other organ transplant qualifications, just the heart and I am not in the habit of disseminating bad information regarding something so serious, so please do not question my honesty by saying, “that’s no true”. We lived it and were in continual contact with a transplant team, meetings, consultations, medical history and during that we understood the process very well.
My husband was eminently going to require an LVAD which would have automatically taken him off the heart transplant list for six months. Fortunately, a heart became available or unfortunately for the blessed donor, depending on how one looks at it.
I’m not the one spinning, here. I’m attempting to un-spin the article that is the subject of this thread, and you seem to take offense at that.
Seems to me that perhaps you have more that just a passing interest in maintaining the overly-positive marketing hype, here.
Me, I’m just a casual observer with some understanding of statistics and have no axe to grind other than disliking marketing hype disguised as objectivity.
Not questioning you honesty...just your accuracy.And how can I do so? An almost 30 year career at the hospital where the first successful kidney transplant was performed and its sister hospital,where the first use of surgical anesthesia took place.
I know something about transplants.
So with your knowledge, do you dispute that many people can not qualify for a heart transplant or other organs for that matter? Do you also dispute that there are different qualifications for various organs?
Aha! The key word..."many".I read your post (very possibly wrongly) that certain conditions...diabetes,for example...*always* rules one out for a transplant.If I misread it I apologize.
Please note that I mentioned that certain health profiles are sometimes given higher priority for a particular organs than others.But mild obesity wouldn't,in and of itself,cause a kidney to be thrown away because the only person who's a match for it is overweight.
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