ABSTRACT
Renal transplantation and its associated immunosuppressive therapy is complicated by an increased incidence of certain cancers that arise de nova after transplantation: mostly skin cancers, non- Hodgkins lymphomas, Kaposi's sarcomas, carcinomas of the vulva and perineum and various sarcomas. There were 288 patients with renal tumors, 66 with incidentally discovered malignancies, and 222 with symptomatic cancers that involved either a solitary kidney or both kidneys. Often many months or years elapsed between treatment of the neoplasm on the one side and development of the contralateral cancer. Nineteen patients had malignant melanomas of the skin and one had a noncutaneous melanoma which arose in the eye. Of the 20 patients six died of metastases from 6 to 30 months after transplantation. In many patients with hepatomas the tumors were large and micrometastases may have been present in the lungs or in the hilar lymphatics at the time of transplantation.
