In a very rare medical case, four European patients got breast cancer after receiving organs from the same donor in 2007. The 53-year-old woman who donated her organs died from a stroke. She had no known medical problems at the time of donation. Doctors did standard screening tests, including physical checks and ultrasounds, but they did not find any signs of cancer.
The donor’s heart, lungs, liver, and both kidneys were given to five different people. The heart recipient died from sepsis just five months after the transplant. But the other four recipients would face a much different problem in the years ahead.
