Passage 2 Skin Cancer Risks for Heart Transplant Patients
器官移植与癌症 《卫报》

 

[00:01]People who have organ transplants, such as heart or lung transplants,
[00:07]have to take drugs that suppress their immune system, usually for life.
[00:13]This is to prevent the body from recognizing the organ as 'foreign' and attacking it.
[00:21]However, this puts people at risk of other problems,
[00:26]such as infections and cancers. A healthy immune system looks out for
[00:33]and destroys abnormal cells. So, if your immune system is suppressed by drugs,
[00:40]you're more likely to get a cancer.
[00:43]Skin cancers are particularly common among people who've had transplants.
[00:50]In many ways, the increased likelihood of people
[00:54] with transplants getting cancer reflects the success of modern transplant surgery.
[01:01]People now live much longer with transplanted organs.
[01:06]But that means there's time
[01:09]for the long-term problems associated with transplants to emerge.
[01:15]The new study followed 312 people who'd had heart transplants for 15 years,
[01:24]to see how many got skin cancers, and what happened to them.
[01:31]Between them, the 312 people in the study had 1395 skin cancers over the 15-year period.
[01:43]The majority (1236) were squamous cell carcinomas, which are the less serious type.
[01:52]They can usually be cured completely if they are removed by surgery.
[01:58]There were also other types of skin cancer, although these were less common.
[02:04]There were 151 basal cell carcinomas, and five malignant melanomas.
[02:12]Malignant melanomas are the most serious type of skin cancer.
[02:18]One person in the study died of malignant melanoma.
[02:23]Some people in the study had more than 300 skin cancers,
[02:29]while others had only one or none. Averaging out the number of cancers over time
[02:37]and the numbers of people in the study, people had around one skin cancer every 3 years.
[02:44]The chance of having had at least one skin cancer after 15 years was 46 percent.
[02:53]People who were most at risk were older when they had their transplant.
[02:59]This may just be because they'd been more exposed to sunlight because of their age.
[03:06]The study was carefully done, but we can't be sure that the results for people
[03:12]who'd had transplants in the US would necessarily apply to people in the UK.
[03:19]That's because how much sun you get can also make a difference.
[03:24]We can't see from the study which part of the US people lived in,
[03:30]so they might get significantly more or less sun
[03:34]than people living in different parts of the UK. Also,
[03:39]treatment and follow-up for people who've had transplants might be different in the US.