Apparently for the first time since Israel began performing organ transplants over four decades ago, recipients have unintentionally been transplanted with organs from a donor who had a malignant tumor, the Health Ministry announced on Monday.
But the cancer, "impossible to detect" in routine tests, according to Israel Transplant chairman Prof. Rafael Beyar, was only a few millimeters in size and located in the pancreas. The four recipients of the donor’s two lungs, two kidneys and a liver will be followed up so that if in the "unlikely" possibility that they get a tumor, it can be treated.
The donor suffered clinical death earlier this month at Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba. All the routine tests that a potential donor undergoes - including a chest scan and tests for AIDS and infectious hepatitis - were conducted, and nothing untoward was found, Beyar, who is also director-general of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, told
The Jerusalem Post.
