Bone Marrow Donation

Bone marrow donation plays an important role in the therapy of malignant tumor diseases affecting the hematopoietic system. Examples of such diseases are: acute leukemias, chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), Hodgkin’s lymphoma or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but also aplastic anemia and thalassemia, which are not tumor diseases. The bone marrow contains stem cells that are important for blood formation.

However, the process of stem cell collection is becoming increasingly donor-friendly. It is becoming increasingly rare to actually puncture a bone in order to obtain stem cells, but instead the so-called stem cell apheresis is used. In this procedure, the donor is administered a substance that promotes blood formation and increases the content of stem cells in the circulating blood so that they can be filtered out.

The bone marrow or stem cells can come from the patient himself or from another donor, who must be compatible. The patient is intensively prepared to receive the bone marrow or stem cell donation. A highly effective radio-chemotherapy destroys all haematopoietic cells in the patient, which often leads to the destruction of the cancer.

The donor material is then added to the blood and the hematopoietic system can normalize. The suppression of the immune system can lead to infections that people with functioning immune cells would not get. It can also lead to organ damage and dangerous venous occlusion.

After a successful and complication-free stem cell transplantation, there is a possibility that cancer may develop again. After the transplantation, the stress for the patient has to be kept as low as possible, which is why a drug-based immunosuppression has to be performed. In this way, cancer can be cured completely and for life.

and stem cell donationDuring kidney transplantation, the donor kidney is normally transplanted into the pelvic space of the patient without removing the functionally impaired kidneys. This makes the procedure somewhat less complicated and prevents complications, at least at this point. The organ is connected to the vascular system of the leg and the bladder.

In many cases, the donor is still alive and has a family or marital relationship with the patient. Since a person can also manage with one kidney, a living donation can be considered for this form of organ transplantation. The aim of this therapy option is to relieve patients, most of whom are on dialysis, of the need for permanent kidney replacement therapy, which can significantly improve their quality of life.

The patients notice an improvement in performance, the mortality rate decreases and the metabolic situation improves. In the long term, the costs of treatment are also lower with a kidney transplant than with years of dialysis therapy. Before a kidney transplantation the compatibility of the donor organ must be checked. In addition, the patient must not have a severe heart condition, a severe cancer or a recent infection. If the organ transplantation is successful and aftercare without complications, a kidney transplant will work the longest among all transplanted organs.