TWO Merseyside transplant patients were given cancer by organs from an undiagnosed donor.
Father-of-four Robert Law, 59, of New Ferry, and 46-year-old Gillian Smart, from St Helens, were given transplants from the same female donor at the Royal Liverpool Hospital.
The donor was treated at another hospital, which health bosses are not naming to protect her identity, and the organs were screened there.
It was only after a postmortem was carried out on her body that medics realised she was suffering from the difficult-to-identify disease intravascular B-cell lymphoma.
The pair were told the news six days after their operations.
Both patients have decided to keep the donor kidneys, rather than have them surgically removed but now face a fight against cancer with a weakened immune system.
An investigation is now underway by the NHS Blood and Transplant service to establish whether the organs were properly screened.
