DEFINITION

A Bone marrow transplant is a medical treatment that replaces your bone marrow with healthy cells.The replacement cells can either come from your body or from a donor .

TYPES

• Allogeneic stem cell transplant
• Autologous stem cell transplant

ALLOGENEIC STEM CELL TRANSPLANT

An allogeneic stem cell transplant uses healthy blood stem cells from a donor to replace your diseased or damaged bone marrow.A donor may be a family member, an acquaintance or someone you dont know

AUTOLOGOUS STEM CELL TRANSPLANT

An autologous stem cell transplant uses healthy blood stem cells from your own body to replace your diseased or damaged bone arrow.An autologous stem cell transplant is also called an autologous bone marrow transplant

USES

• Safely allow treatment of your condition with high dose of chemotherapy or radiation by replacing or rescuing the bone marrow damaged by treatment
• Replace diseased or damaged marrow with new cells
• Provide new stem cells which can help kill cancer cells directly

Bone marrow transplants can benefit people with a variety of both cancerous and non cancerous diseases including

• Acute  leukemia
• Aplastic anaemia
• Bone marrow failure syndrome
• Chronic leukemias
• Hemoglobinoplathies
• Hodgkins lymphoma
• Immune deficiencies
• Multiple myeloma
• Neuro blastoma
• Non hodgkins lymphoma
• Plasma cell disorders

COMPLICATIONS

Short complications

• drop in blood pressure
• headache
• nausea
• pain
• shortness of breath
• chills
• fever

Long term complications

• Graft versus host disease (GVHD) which is a condition in which donor cells attack your body
• Graft failure which occurs when transplanted cells dont begin producing new cells as planned
• Bleeding in lungs ,brain and other parts of body
• Cataracts
• Damage of vital organs
• Early menopause
• Anemia
• Infections

PROCEDURE

When your doctor thinks you are ready  you will have the transplant .The procedure is similar to a blood transfusion.If you are having an allogeneic transplant bone marrow cells will be harvested from your donor a day or two before your procedure .If your own cells are being used, they will be retrieved from the stem cell bank

Cell are collected in two ways.During a bone marrow harvest cells are collected from both hipbones through   needle.Your are under anesthesia for this procedure meaning you will be asleep and free of any pain

OUTLOOK

The body’s response to a bone marrow transplant varies greatly from person to person .Factors such as age overall health and the reason for the transplant can all affect a persons long term outlook.If a person receives a bone marrow transplant to treat cancer ,their outlook depends in part on how far the cancer has spread .Cancer  that has spread far from its origin for example respond less to the treatment

For getting opinion from our network of hospitals visit www.mvtbooking.com or send email to query@gtsmeditour.com

Prepared by : Dr Sajna Hamza