Blood and Marrow Transplant Options
Transplant options for every child
One of the first questions families ask us is will my child have a donor?
When we meet a child in need of a transplant, we search all available donor options. Doing so means we can quickly find the best solution each child. As a transplant center for the National Marrow Donor Program, Children’s Mercy has access to donor registries throughout the world.
There are two types of transplant:
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Allogeneic transplant is when cells are obtained from someone else.
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Autologous transplant is when the patient’s own cells are used.
Types of donors include:
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Matched siblings
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Partially matched related donors (including parents), also called a haploidentical transplant
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Unrelated donors from a volunteer registry
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Umbilical cord blood units
We can obtain the healthy cells from the donor in different ways. These include:
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Bone marrow – typically taken from the back of the hip bones from the donor
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Peripheral blood - taken from the blood of the donor by using a machine to filter out the stem cells
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Cord blood transplants – using stem cells from donated umbilical cords
Transplants completed in 2018