Man's Heart Surgery Cures His Skin Cancer – And Leaves Him With A Brand New Bee Allergy

But if none of those suit, maybe you could just get open heart surgery.

Look, we’re not saying it’ll work for everyone – only that it did for one guy. That’s according to a case report published back in June which details the patient’s journey from Death’s door to hale and hearty – with just one small and rather peculiar caveat.

Cardiac complications

“A man in his mid 60s with a history of resected primary cutaneous melanoma then developed metastatic BRAF V600E mutant disease involving lymph nodes, liver and bone,” begins the write-up, explaining that the patient tried immunotherapy but had to stop because it was damaging his liver, and the tumors weren’t responding in any case.

The prognosis was bad: he would likely die within five years, the report notes.

But things got worse. “During this time, he underwent surgical aortic valve replacement for severe aortic stenosis with coronary artery bypass grafting,” the paper reports. “The latter procedure was complicated by an infection.”

So to recap: skin cancer that had spread throughout his body, heart disease bad enough to restrict blood flow out of the left ventricle and leading to a thickening and weakness in the heart muscle, and a combination of organ damage and bacterial infections from the treatment of both. 

It was, altogether, not an optimistic list of conditions.

And then, something really strange happened. About two months after the heart operation, the man underwent a routine scan to monitor his cancer – and the doctors found nothing. 

His cancer had completely disappeared, even without any further treatment, and it never came back. “The patient has remained in complete remission on surveillance alone for more than 6 years,” the case report confirms.

It’s certainly a surprising result – though perhaps not so much as you might expect. 

Resetting the immune system

As New Scientist points out, more than 70 case studies have previously linked surgery to spontaneous regression in melanomas, whether it’s a minor biopsy, something performed in the course of treatment, or, as with this recent case, a completely unrelated procedure.

But what, precisely, is going on in any of these cases is still kind of a mystery. 

One of the current favorite theories is that when you undergo surgery, it activates your immune system to help repair the tissue trauma involved. Trigger that reaction strongly enough, and in the particular right way for anti-cancer cells like T-cells to be released, and you might just be lucky enough to fight off the cancer all on your own – just as seems to have happened with this case.

So, a heartwarming story of a miracle cancer regression? Sure, but remember that one weird caveat we mentioned up top? 

For all his health woes, the patient had never been allergic to bee stings before his surgery. And this wasn’t through lack of experience. He was a farmer and had been stung dozens of times, none of which had been life-threatening.

But for some reason we’re really not sure about, that changed after his surgery. Two years after he was given the all-clear, a honeybee took a dislike to him and gave him a sting that sent him into anaphylaxis.

“The new development of the bee venom allergy is particularly intriguing,” Rohit Sharma, a surgical oncologist at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, told New Scientist. It is, he said, “a marker of a permanently reset immune system.”

“Something absolutely fascinating is happening with his immune system,” agreed Rebecca Auer, Executive Vice-President of Research and Innovation at The Ottawa Hospital in Canada, who wasn’t involved in the man’s treatment.

“We do know that unusual immune reactions, whether it’s due to viruses, or vaccines or other major changes [like surgery], can really change the anti-tumour immune response and lead to surprising regressions,” she said.

The case study is published in BMJ Case Reports.