One-in-a-billion case: Doctor inherits cancer cells from patient
A surgeon accidentally inherited cancer cells during an operation, a unique case recounted by Dr Tany Thaniyavarn. The exceptional incident challenges the notion that cancer is non-communicable.
Considered a one-in-a-billion case, a doctor in a foreign country inherited cancer cells from a patient during an operation, as recounted by a well-known Thai doctor.
Dr Tany Thaniyavarn, a specialist in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Lung Transplantation, who also teaches at a medical school in the US, shared details of this extraordinary case on his YouTube channel.
Dr Tany, whose channel has over 737,000 subscribers, explained on Monday that cancer is typically non-communicable and does not spread from one person to another.
However, he highlighted an exceptional case of communicable cancer reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996.
In this case, a 32-year-old man had cancer in his abdominal cavity, specifically a type known as malignant fibrous histiocytoma. During an operation to remove the tumour, the surgeon accidentally cut his left middle finger while inserting a tube to drain blood.
Dr Tany explained that although the surgeon cleaned the wound thoroughly and it healed, six months later, a 3-centimetre tumour developed at the site of the injury. Upon examination, the tumour was identified as malignant fibrous histiocytoma, the same type of cancer the patient had.
Sadly, the patient later died from complications, but the surgeon underwent cancer treatment and was declared cancer-free two years later.
Dr Tany believes that when the surgeon suffered the cut, cancerous cells from the patient’s blood entered his body and managed to survive, eventually developing into a cancerous tumour.
