Malignancy in renal transplant recipients at King Hussein medical center

The files of 181 patients who underwent kidney transplantation at King Hussein Medical Center between 1983 and 1992 were reviewed to study the incidence and pattern of malignancy in them. Of them, 149 patients (82.3%) were recipients of live related donor allografts while 32 (17.7%) had received cadaveric allografts. Three patients (1.7%) developed malignancy giving an estimated annual incidence for post-transplant malignancy of 17/10,000 kidney transplanted patients. The first patient had squamous cell carcinoma of the nose, the second, Kaposi's sarcoma and the third, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma involving the retroperitoneal lymph nodes. All these patients were on triple immunosuppressive drug protocol. The malignancies were diagnosed after a mean of 25.6 months following transplantation. The patient with squamous cell carcinoma responded to local excision of the tumor without altering the immunosuppressive therapy. The Kaposi's sarcoma regressed after discontinuation of cyclosporine without any adverse effects on the graft function while the patient with lymphoma died two months after the diagnosis was made. Our study shows that the incidence of malignancy after transplantation in Jordan is similar to what is reported in the literature.