Allograft and Overall Survival of Patients with Posttransplant Skin Cancer

BACKGROUND Little is known about the possible association between nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) and allograft survival and overall patient survival. OBJECTIVE To determine the association between posttransplant NMSC and early to mid-term allograft survival and overall patient survival after kidney, liver, or heart transplantation. METHODS AND MATERIALS We retrospectively reviewed patients identified from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/United Network for Organ Sharing database. The study included adult recipients of kidney (n = 46,216), liver (n = 8,049), and heart (n = 8,519) transplants from 1996 to 2001. RESULTS Multivariate analysis showed that kidney recipients with NMSC had a significantly lower risk of allograft loss (relative risk (RR) = 0.55, p<.001) and death (RR = 0.55; p<.001) within 5 years of transplantation than recipients without NMSC. Significantly lower risk of death was also observed for liver recipients (RR = 0.28, p<.001) and heart recipients (RR = 0.25; p<.001) with NMSC. CONCLUSIONS Longer early to mid-term allograft and overall survival was seen in patients with NMSC, but long-term survival rates must be examined to determine whether mortality rates increase later for patients with NMSC, as noted in previous studies.