Incidence of primary skin cancer after organ transplantation: An 18-year single-center experience in Korea.

Background: Skin cancer is the most common malignancy to arise after organ transplantation in Caucasians, but limited data are available on its incidence in Asian transplant recipients.

Objective: We sought to assess the incidence of skin cancer after organ transplantation in a Korean cohort.

Methods: A cohort study was conducted to determine the incidence and risk factors for skin cancers among kidney, liver, heart, or pancreas transplant recipients, treated at the Asan Medical Center in Seoul, Korea.

Results: The cumulative incidences of skin cancer were 0.70% at 5 years, 1.66% at 10 years, and 2.31% at 15 years. For all skin cancers, squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, and Kaposi sarcoma, the standardized incidence ratios between the recipients and the Korean general population were 30.9 (95% confidence interval, 12.4-63.6), 61.9 (12.8-180.8), 11.9 (0.3-66.1), and 565.2 (68.4-2041.6) after the end of the fifth posttransplantation year, respectively.

Limitations: We cannot exclude the possibility of both the underestimation because of potential missing cases and the overestimation because of the ascertainment bias.

Conclusion: The incidence of posttransplantation skin cancer is very low in Korean patients. However, the risk of skin cancer in organ transplant recipients may be considerably higher than that in the Korean general population.