Everything You Need To Know About Bone Marrow Transplant

Bone marrow is a kind of tissue that’s present inside our bones and helps produce blood cells through immature cells in the bone marrow, also known as Stem Cells. A bone marrow transplant is conducted to remove and replace affected or diseased bone marrow with healthy stem cells.

Pre-requisites for a bone marrow transplant: 
Prior to a bone marrow transplant, radiation / chemotherapy may be employed, and that employs either one of the two methods: 
Ablative Treatment: This is used to kill bone marrow cancer, if any, and also destroy any healthy bone marrow if present so as to allow new cells to grow. 

Reduced Intensity Treatment: This procedure is primarily for older people and those with other health ailments. 

There are three kinds of bone marrow transplants:

Autologous bone marrow transplant: This is also called a rescue transplant and is a procedure where prior to the chemotherapy, the stem cells are removed and kept in a freezer. Once the chemotherapy is done, the cells are put back into the bone marrow.

Allergic Bone Marrow Transplant: This procedure involves stem cell transplant as stem cells are removed from the patient’s body and are replaced by donor cells. Tests are performed to find a good match, and often a good match comes from the family and / or those related to the patient.

Umbilical Cord Transplant: In this case, stem cells from a new born’s umbilical cord are taken out and kept in a bank. Since a new born’s stem cells are still immature, it doesn’t require perfect matching when later used for a bone marrow transplant. 

Although healthcare technologies have taken massive leaps in terms of patient outcome

and risk reduction, there are, still, certain risks involved in a bone marrow transplant, such as:

- Chest pain

- Low blood pressure

- Fever

- Headache

- Nausea

- Pain

- Bad Breath

- Anaemia

- Cataracts

- Early menopause among a few others.