De Novo cancer in the liver allograft recipient

Because of the immunosuppression inherent to maintaining a liver allograft, theoretically the host's immune surveillance mechanism for tumor cells should be suboptimal. In fact, transplantation patients of all types are slightly more susceptible to develop uncommon tumors and develop a higher incidence of the more common tumors. The most common tumor to afflict transplant patients as in the normal population is skin cancer (basal and squamous cell types). The incidence in transplant patient population is approximately two percent, which is approximately twice the incidence in the normal population. Recipients are more susceptible to some very unusual tumors such as a variety of lymphomas and Kaposi's sarcoma. Fortunately, the incidence of these usually fatal tumors is one percent.