Can cancer be contagious? Surgeon 'catches' rare cancer from a patient

Is cancer a contagious disease that can spread through contact? No, not usually. However, a case being widely shared online shows that while this is very rare, it is not impossible to "catch" cancer from another person.

In what is believed to be the first-of-its-kind case, a doctor has caught a rare type of cancer while operating on a patient.

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What happened?

The rare cancer transmission was originally reported in 1996 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Now, the medical anomaly has resurfaced.

While performing an operation to remove a tumour from a 32-year-old man's abdomen, a surgeon accidentally sliced the palm of his left hand and later developed a cancer that turned out to be genetically identical to his patient's. In the report, doctors described the case as an "accidental transplantation".

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The surgeon, as per reports, was trying to place a drain in his patient when he accidentally cut his palm. The wound was immediately disinfected and bandaged. However, five months later, the 53-year-old surgeon noticed a small lump was developing at the site of the injury.

Upon testing, it was concluded that the 1.2-inch lump was a malignant fibrous histiocytoma tumour with cancer cells genetically identical to the patient.  

How is that possible?

Normally, it is not possible. Usually, our body rejects any foreign tissue, however, as per the study authors, in this case, the surgeon's body had an "ineffective antitumour immune response".

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"In the case of the surgeon, an intense inflammatory reaction developed in the tissue surrounding the tumour, but the tumour mass increased, suggesting an ineffective antitumor immune response," they wrote.

They speculated that the tumour "escaped immunologic destruction through several mechanisms," and in this extremely rare case, the tumour transplantation was aided by a failure in the surgeon's body to detect and attack tumour cells effectively. There were no signs the cancer had returned or spread in the surgeon after he had the tumour removed.

(With inputs from agencies)