A bone marrow transplant is a way to replace damaged or destroyed bone marrow with healthy bone marrow stem cells. In general terms, bone marrow refers to soft, fat-filled material found inside your bones. In fact, it is our bone marrow that makes blood cells. (Stem cells are very young cells in your bone marrow that make all your blood cells.)
Description
Before the transplant, you may need to undergo chemotherapy or radiation sessions.
- One is an “ablative” treatment. It also lets new stem cells grow in the bone marrow. The surgeon gives high doses of chemotherapy, radiation, or both to kill any cancer cells in this treatment.
- Mini transplant or Reduced intensity treatment- This type involves lower doses of radiation and chemotherapy before the transplant. Besides this, it also lets older people or those with severe health conditions have a transplant.
Three different types of Bone Marrow Transplants
When it comes to bone marrow transplant type, you may come across three different options. These are
Autologous Bone Marrow Transplant
One type is autologous bone marrow transplant because “auto” means ” own.” The surgeon removes your stem cells before you get high-dose chemotherapy or radiation. Then they freeze the stem cells. After you have high-dose chemotherapy or radiation, your stem cells are put back into your body so that they can make healthy blood cells.
Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplant
An allogeneic bone marrow transplant is when someone else gets their bone marrow. Donors give their stem cells to someone else. It’s usually a good idea for the donor’s genes, at least partly to match your own genes. The doctor performs special tests to find if the donor is a good match for you. Most likely, a brother or sister will be a good match. It can be good for parents, kids, and other relatives to get along. National bone marrow registries can help you find people who aren’t related to you but still have the same blood type.
Umbilical cord blood transplant
This is a type of allogeneic transplant. Umbilical cord blood is a good source of blood for transplant. The transplant team takes stem cells from a newborn baby’s umbilical cord right after birth. For now, the stem cells are frozen and kept in a safe place until they are needed to give someone else their health back. Umbilical cord blood cells are very young, so there is less of a need for them to be exactly the same as each other. Because there aren’t as many stem cells, blood counts take a long time to get back to normal.
After chemotherapy and radiation, most people have a stem cell transplant. It uses a central venous catheter tube to get the stem cells into your bloodstream. Getting a blood transfusion is a lot like this. People get their stem cells from the blood and put them in their body’s bone marrow.
Who Can Be The Potential Donors
Both dead donors and still alive people can give away their organs. When a living donor gives part of their body, they can give away a kidney. They can also give away the part of their intestine, liver, lung, or pancreas that they have. Dead donors have been categorized into two groups:
(1) Donation after brain death and
(2) Donation after heart death.
Brain death is when all of the brain’s functions stop. It is impossible to come back to life after brain death. Cardiac death happens when the heart stops working for good.
People of all ages can think about themselves as possible organ donors. HIV-positive status, active cancer, and systemic infection are the few medical conditions that make it impossible to donate. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, sickle cell anemia, or a history of intravenous drug abuse are just some of the other things that might make someone ineligible to donate organs. Potential donors are checked out based on their medical history.
Ways to Collect Donor Cells
There are two ways to collect donor cells.
- Bone marrow harvest: This small surgery uses general anesthesia. The donor will be asleep and not feel any pain during the surgery. The amount of marrow depends on how big the person getting it is.
- Leukapheresis: As a first step, the donor gets shots for a few days to help stem cells move into the blood. One expert from the transplant team takes out blood from the donor through an IV line. The part of white blood cells with stem cells is then separated in a machine and taken away to be given to the person who needs it. The donor gets the red blood cells back.
A bone marrow transplant is a complicated procedure. Therefore, it is important to search for the best hospital and surgeon and bone marrow transplant cost in India?. To book a live consultation with experts, visit the website now! At Lyfboat, you can find a wide range of authorized hospitals and surgeons along with affordable packages.
