Surgeon catches cancer from patient in first of it's kind case

hollydolly

hollydolly

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Location
London England
I know this sounds like something from the national Equirer, but it's real.... allegedly

A doctor operating on a cancer patient accidentally 'transplanted' the disease into himself, in what is believed to be a one-of-a-kind event.

A 32-year-old man from Germany had been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer and was having a tumor removed from his abdomen.

While in surgery, the doctor performing the procedure accidentally cut his hand, but the wound was disinfected and bandaged immediately.
However, five months later, the 53-year-old surgeon noticed a small lump developing where he had injured himself months earlier and sought care.

The lump turned out to be a malignant tumor and tests showed it was genetically identical to the cancer suffered by his former patient.

This lead the medical team who treated him to conclude he had caught the cancer when tumor cells entered the cut on his hand.

Authors of the case report called this an usual situation because in a traditional transplant, the body mounts an immune response and rejects any foreign tissue, and they would have expected the same in the doctor's case.

However, given the tumor's development, and growth, it suggests the surgeon's body had an 'ineffective antitumor immune response.'
While the case was originally reported in 1996, it has resurfaced with renewed interest.

Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors detailed the 'accidental transplantation' of the patient's malignant fibrous histiocytoma - a rare type of cancer that forms in soft tissue with just 1,400 diagnoses per year.

The doctor injured the palm of his left hand when trying to place a drain in his patient while performing surgery to remove the cancer from the patient's abdomen.

The wound was immediately disinfected and bandaged.
While the cancer patient's initial surgery was successful, he died following complications after the procedure.

Five months later, a hard 1.2inch 'tumor-like swelling' appeared at the base of the doctor's left middle finger and he visited a hand specialist.

An 'extensive' exam was conducted, including numerous laboratory and blood tests, which revealed no abnormal findings.

The tumor was removed anyway and examining the mass under a microscope revealed it was also a malignant fibrous histiocytoma.

The physician who had been treating both the cancer patient and the surgeon 'raised the question whether the tumors were related.

Samples of both tumors were further analyzed and were determined to be 'identical.'

They both had the same types of cells and arrangement of those cells, meaning the surgeon may have unknowingly transferred cancer cells from the patient to the cut in his hand, allowing the disease to take root and grow in his body.


Surgeon catches CANCER from patient in first-of-its-kind case
 

hollydolly said:
'ineffective antitumor immune response.'
Click to expand...
As we have been talking here on SF about the importance of a strong immune system. That modern times have created an environment where our immune systems are constantly challenged. Think if this continues and the spread of infectious diseases becomes an epidemic in itself. Anti biotics are over prescribed, and they are in our food and water. This is all something the next generations are going to have to deal with soon.
 
I've actually wondered about this. If a cancer cell from Joe gets into Bob's body, why would it not continue to grow? It seems like all the necessary ingredients would still be there.
 

I hate that everything is listed as a disease. Cancer is not a disease. It can't be spread. Otherwise everything would be catchy.
Cancer is simply the process of the bodies own cells grow uncontrollably, attack itself and create cellular decay, tumors, growths, etc.
Cancer cells differ from normal cells in many ways. For instance, cancer cells:
  • grow in the absence of signals telling them to grow. Normal cells only grow when they receive such signals.
  • ignore signals that normally tell cells to stop dividing or to die (a process known as programmed cell death, or apoptosis).
  • invade into nearby areas and spread to other areas of the body. Normal cells stop growing when they encounter other cells, and most normal cells do not move around the body.
  • tell blood vessels to grow toward tumors. These blood vessels supply tumors with oxygen and nutrients and remove waste products from tumors.
  • hide from the immune system. The immune system normally eliminates damaged or abnormal cells.
  • trick the immune system into helping cancer cells stay alive and grow. For instance, some cancer cells convince immune cells to protect the tumor instead of attacking it.
  • accumulate multiple changes in their chromosomes, such as duplications and deletions of chromosome parts. Some cancer cells have double the normal number of chromosomes.
  • rely on different kinds of nutrients than normal cells. In addition, some cancer cells make energy from nutrients in a different way than most normal cells. This lets cancer cells grow more quickly.
 
Tazx said:
I hate that everything is listed as a disease. Cancer is not a disease. It can't be spread. Otherwise everything would be catchy.
Cancer is simply the process of the bodies own cells grow uncontrollably, attack itself and create cellular decay, tumors, growths, etc.
Cancer cells differ from normal cells in many ways. For instance, cancer cells:
  • grow in the absence of signals telling them to grow. Normal cells only grow when they receive such signals.
  • ignore signals that normally tell cells to stop dividing or to die (a process known as programmed cell death, or apoptosis).
  • invade into nearby areas and spread to other areas of the body. Normal cells stop growing when they encounter other cells, and most normal cells do not move around the body.
  • tell blood vessels to grow toward tumors. These blood vessels supply tumors with oxygen and nutrients and remove waste products from tumors.
  • hide from the immune system. The immune system normally eliminates damaged or abnormal cells.
  • trick the immune system into helping cancer cells stay alive and grow. For instance, some cancer cells convince immune cells to protect the tumor instead of attacking it.
  • accumulate multiple changes in their chromosomes, such as duplications and deletions of chromosome parts. Some cancer cells have double the normal number of chromosomes.
  • rely on different kinds of nutrients than normal cells. In addition, some cancer cells make energy from nutrients in a different way than most normal cells. This lets cancer cells grow more quickly.
Click to expand...
Yes, this IS what the doctor got from the patient he was operating on. Call it what you want, but it jumped to another human.
 
Tazx said:
I hate that everything is listed as a disease. Cancer is not a disease. It can't be spread.
Click to expand...

Did you just say "Cancer is not a disease?" Uh... why yes, yes you did. Perhaps you could write an email to the National Cancer Institute and inform them? They didn't get the memo, obviously. I'll confess that I'm not 100% sure if you're teasing or if you actually think cancer isn't considered a disease anywhere in the world.

From: What Is Cancer?

"The Definition of Cancer​

Cancer is a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body."
 
I would guess that most diseases spread from one person to another, but apparently that ability is not a defining characteristic of a disease. I'm not the one who officially defines the word or any words, but I do have conceptions as well as misconceptions about many definitions. I think of cancer as a disease, and it comes to mind before I think of flu, which in my head is a virus. When I have the flu, I don't think to myself, "Oh my, I have a disease," even though I have probably passed it on to 10 other people.

But all this is idiosyncratic garble. In the end we can't change something by giving it a different name. I'm still puzzling over whether cancer is transferable. To me, that's a more interesting thing to consider.
 
This happened over 30 years ago and it is an extremely rare occurrence.

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A surgeon getting cancer directly from a patient is extremely rare and essentially never happens because cancer is not contagious in the way that most people think; it cannot be transmitted through typical surgical procedures.
 
MarkinPhx said:
This happened over 30 years ago and it is an extremely rare occurrence.

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A surgeon getting cancer directly from a patient is extremely rare and essentially never happens because cancer is not contagious in the way that most people think; it cannot be transmitted through typical surgical procedures.
Click to expand...
what year do you think we're in ?


However, given the tumor's development, and growth, it suggests the surgeon's body had an 'ineffective antitumor immune response.'
While the case was originally reported in 1996, it has resurfaced with renewed interest.
 
OK, well then 28 years and 11 months ago when it was first reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. (November 14, 1996)
 
This is from 1996 but...

Could there be external factors like a disease that triggers tumor growth. If both the doctor and surgeon lived or worked in the same area maybe both had the disease and can be triggered by a cut which triggers the immune system. Maybe the patient had a trauma to his ab area which would've trigger his tumor then the doctor getting cut that 'disease' did the same thing.
 
Recurrence rate of a specific tumor is likely the strongest indicator of how easily a tumor cell can transplant into another's body, or spread inside a a cancer patient.

For example: Is why ovarian cancer is so fatal. IMHO: because ovaries' function is to make cells specifically for implanting in a uterus.
 
The 2013 review added: 'The low frequency and very variable stage of cancers mean that definitive risk calculations are impossible.'

However, the authors continued, the data is 'highly likely to underestimate the true incidence.'

Using the limited data available, authors of the 2013 report found cancers known to have been transmitted from donor to recipient on at least one occasion include, breast cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer and renal cancer.
 
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