Incidence and outcomes of post‐transplant lymphoproliferative disease after 5365 solid‐organ transplants over a 20‐year period at two UK transplant centres

Post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD) is a life-threatening complication of solid-organ transplantation (SOT). We present the incidence and outcomes of PTLD in a cohort of 5365 SOT recipients over a 20-year period at two UK transplant centres. With a median follow-up of 7.7 years, 142 of 5365 patients have developed PTLD. Cumulative incidence was 18% at five years after multivisceral transplant and 1%–3% at five years following the other SOT types. Twenty-year cumulative incidence was 2%–3% following liver and heart transplantation and 10% following kidney transplantation. Median overall survival (OS) following SOT was 16 years, which is significantly reduced compared with the age-adjusted UK population. There is relatively high early mortality following diagnosis of PTLD and only patients surviving two years regained a longer-term survival approaching the non-PTLD SOT cohort. Of 90 patients with monomorphic PTLD, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, 66 were treated with first-line rituximab monotherapy and 24 received first-line rituximab plus chemotherapy. Up-front rituximab monotherapy does not appear to compromise OS, but the number of patients dying from non-lymphoma causes before and after treatment remains high with both treatment approaches. Multivariate analysis of all 90 monomorphic PTLD patients identified an International Prognostic Index (IPI) of 3+ as the strongest pretreatment variable associating with inferior one-year OS.