Your bones harbor blood manufacturing factories. Those factories, packed in the bone marrow, produce stem cells that develop into red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Cancers such as leukemia and a few genetic conditions can weaken the bone marrow, necessitating a bone marrow transplant.
Witold Rybka, MD, director of the Bone Marrow Transplantation Program at Penn State Hershey, fielded questions recently in this Q&A on the procedure. An excerpt:
What are the most common types of bone marrow transplants?
For an autologous transplant, the patient can bank his or her own stem cells before undergoing intensive treatment for certain diseases such as lymphoma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma or multiple myeloma. The patient’s body can then use its own banked stem cells to regenerate healthy marrow once treatment is complete. Other transplants are allogeneic, meaning that the patient must receive matching stem cells from a sibling, family member or unrelated donor.
What are the odds of finding a match within one’s own family?
The chance of finding a full match is one in four, so the larger your family, the better chance you have of finding a match among your relatives. Given the size of most American families, most donors must use an unrelated match from a registry of more than 17 million living donors worldwide.
Unfortunately, it's possible that a patient who needs a bone marrow transfusion won't get one. Most banked stem cells are from donors in North America and Europe, making it easier for white patients to find a match. For patients of other ethnicities, the chance of finding a donor is only 60 percent, Rybka said.
To learn more about bone marrow transplants, visit Be The Match.
Previously: Bone marrow transplantation: The ultimate exercise in matchmaking, Bone marrow transplantation field mourns passing of pioneer Karl Blume and One (blood stem) cell to rule them all? Perhaps not, say Stanford researchers
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