One of the small redeeming factors of the cancer epidemic is that it isn't catching. But, for the first time, a surgeon has somehow caught cancer from a patient
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The story was first reported in the New England Journal Of Medicine. Due to the nature of cancer, it should not be transmittable by usual methods. It doesn't transfer through air, water, or body fluids. One person with it will never normally spread it to someone else. And yet, through a terrible bout of bad luck, a surgeon caught cancer he was removing from a patient.
While removing a rare form of cancer from a 32-year-old German man, the 53-year-old surgeon cut his hand. It was quickly cleaned and bandaged and the surgery was continued. The tumor was being removed from the man's abdomen.
Five months later, the doctor noticed a lump where he had cut himself during the surgery. He went in to have it checked, and it turned out that he had caught cancer from his patient. The lump in the man's hand was genetically identical to that of his patient. It had developed into a malignant tumor.
Surgeon Who Caught Cancer Is An Incredibly Rare Case
There is little cause to worry, though. This case happened back in 1996, and no other cases have been reported since. It is almost impossible for cancer to spread this way, and the surgeon who caught cancer was a one-off case.
According to studies, this situation usually results in the body rejecting the foreign cells. They would be unable to live in the surgeon due to their alien DNA. However, due to an ineffective antitumor immune response, he was susceptible. "Normally, transplantation of allogeneic tissue from one person to another induces an immune response that leads to the rejection of the transplanted tissue," the study states. "In the case of the surgeon, an intense inflammatory reaction developed in the tissue surrounding the tumor, but the tumor mass increased, suggesting an ineffective antitumor immune response."
So, no need to start donning your facemasks and obsessively dousing yourself in antibacterial gel. The doctor caught cancer under very specific, and unusual circumstances. If you happen to be a surgeon with low antitumor defenses though, be extra careful when performing surgery on rare cancer. You never know.
