LEEDS, England, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- A lawsuit is planned against British doctors who transplanted a cancerous liver into a man who died soon afterward, The Mirror reported Thursday.
A coroner's inquest in Leeds heard former policeman Peter Dickinson died of untreatable cancer 11 months after the July 2002 surgery to replace his own badly diseased liver.
The inquest heard how another patient received a pancreatic transplant from the same unidentified 26-year-old organ donor. The pancreas was found to be cancerous and untreatable, leading doctors to assess Dickinson again.
Dr. Raj Prasad testified doctors did not tell the father of two it may have affected his new liver because they didn't want to traumatize him.
"There are only five or six cases in the world where a tumor has passed through the pancreas into the liver," Prasad said. "We have performed over 3,000 transplants and never come across this."
