Bone Marrow Transplant: Importance and Working?

Life-threatening blood cancers like Leukemia, sickle cell anaemia, and lymphoma don't affect only the blood cells. They can damage the part of the bones called bone marrow, which is responsible for the forming of blood cells. Marrow is a soft spongy tissue in bones that contains stem cells.

Blood cancers keep stem cells from developing normally, and this can turn fatal quickly. A bone marrow transplant (BMT) or a stem cell transplant is crucial in such a case. A stem cell transplant effectively replaces the damaged cell with new healthy cells. Here we look at the BMT procedure and why it is essential to get it done by a bone marrow transplant specialist.

Types of Bone Marrow Transplant

BMT can be done in three different ways. The procedure taken to transplant depends upon the source of the healthy cells. The doctor would either transplant the cells from the patient's own body or transplant them from a donor. There's also a third kind of transplant used in rare cases where they transplant cells from a newborn baby.

Autologous Transplant

To begin conducting an autologous bone marrow transplant, the doctor collects healthy stem cells from the patient’s own bloodstream and stores them in a freezer. He then puts back the healthy cells into the bone marrow.

Allogeneic Transplant

The term 'allo' stands for others. The doctor removes stem cells for another person's body in this kind of bone cancer treatment. The prerequisite for a donation is that the genes of the donor should at least partially match with the patient. The donor must undergo special tests to confirm similarities in genes. Other than relatives, bone marrow registries are used to find matching donors.

Umbilical Cord Blood Transplant

This is a different type of allogeneic transplant where the doctor takes healthy stem cells from a newborn's umbilical cord. They remove the cells from a newborn's cord and store it in the freezer. These blood cells are immature and don't require genetic matching.

Importance of radiation therapies before transplant

Stem cell transplants should only be done after radiation and chemotherapy. These therapies destroy the damaged bone marrow cells to make way for new healthy cells. This is done in two ways:

● Ablative treatment

It's a preliminary for bone cancer treatment where doctors use high doses of chemotherapy and radiation therapy before surgery. These high dose therapies kill damaged cells as well as remaining health cells to allow new cells to grow.

● Low-intensity treatment

Doctors prescribe this for older people and those with weak immune systems. They give lower doses of chemotherapy before a transplant in this method.

Choosing the right transplant

While the preparation of the surgery and the radiation therapy takes time, the surgery itself requires just about 3-4 hours. The doctor gives anaesthesia to the patient. He then uses an intravenous method to transfer healthy cells. Choosing the right type of transplant depends upon your disease, health of bone marrow, and age.

You need to discuss this with a bone marrow transplant specialist about the long term and short term effects of the transplant. An ALLO transplant is a better option for patients having cancer. Using your stem cells isn't ideal in this situation. Ensure that most of your relatives are present at the clinic for donation, as they are likely to have similar genes as you.