Heart and liver transplant recipients are at particularly high risk of developing lung cancer after receiving the donated organ, researchers report at the 2nd European Lung Cancer Conference. They are advising doctors to screen for such cancers in these patients to maximize the chance of detecting the malignancy early.

Doctors have known for decades that the immunosuppressive drugs given to transplant patients increase their risk of developing new cancers. In transplant patients, the risk of developing a malignant tumor ranges from 4% to 18% and may be 100-fold higher than in the general population. The most common malignancies after transplantation are cancers of the lips and skin, lymphoproliferative disorders and Kaposi’s sarcoma.