Bone Marrow Transplant 4 Lisa
Bone Marrow
Bone Marrow is a spongy substance found in the centre of our bones and is where the production of stem cells occurs.
When bone marrow is functioning correctly, stem cells go on to mature and form the 3 types of blood cells:
- Red Blood Cells - responsible for carrying oxygen around the body
- White Blood Cells - responsible for fighting infection
- Platelets - responsible for clotting the blood and preventing excessive bleeding
In certain types of diseases such as blood cancers like leukaemia, the stem cells do not mature properly and cannot function as intended. When they spill over into the blood stream, they start to crowd out the healthy cells, gradually reducing their effectiveness.
Chemotherapy
Intensive and very toxic forms of treatment, usually based around chemotherapy are required to halt this process. Chemotherapy drugs destroy cancerous cells but unfortunately also attack healthy cells. This gives rise to the unpleasant side effects associated with chemotherapy, including sickness, infection risk, the need for blood and platelet transfusions, loss of appetite, hair loss.
It is common to have 4 or 5 cycles of chemotherapy in order to try and:
- Get the cancer into remission
- Attempt to ensure it does not return
In Lisa's case, her leukaemia was put into remission but relapsed only 2 months after the last course of treatment finished. The treatment therefore failed and at that point her consultant advised that chemotherapy alone would not have offered a long term cure.
Bone Marrow Transplant
This process commences with high dose chemotherapy and possibly radiotherapy, that will completely destroy the existing bone marrow and stem cells.
Then, bone marrow (or stem cells) from a healthy donor are introduced into the body with the aim that production of cancer-free healthy blood, starts shortly afterwards. There are 2 types of bone marrow transplant:
Autologous Transplant
This is where stem cells are collected (or harvested) from the patient themselves, at a point when their bone marrow is healthy. This stem cell harvest is sometimes performed on patients in remission as a 'back up' in case of future relapse. This was the plan with Lisa but unfortunately the leukaemia returned before this could be done.
Allogenic Transplant
In this procedure, healthy bone marrow or stem cells are donated by another person.
In around 30% of cases, patients find a donor who is a matched sibling. The remaining 70% of patients need to find a 'matched unrelated donor'. This is someone who has volunteered to join one of the bone marrow donor registers.
