The Meaning Of Stem Cell Transplants
Friday, June 4th, 2010Chemotherapy as a cancer treatment destroys the blood generating cells in the bone marrow, which is why transplants are often necessary in order to increase the life expectation of patients treated for tumors. Stem cell transplantation thus represents the major treatment solution for thousands of people who need such a form of regenerative therapy. Before any transplant, one needs to find a suitable donor, or in the absence of compatibility, the patient’s bone marrow cells will be collected and stored prior to the beginning of chemotherapy. After collection, they will be frozen and stored until the intervention.
The stem cell transplants are injected into the patient’s bloodstream and they thus reach the bone marrow where they start producing blood cells. There are several cycles of stem cell transplants that need to be performed depending on the cycles of the chemotherapy treatment. How can stem cells contribute to blood formation? Well, these remarkable biological cellular formations can generate the three types of blood cells such as the red blood cells, the white blood cells and the platelets. The red cells carry the oxygen to all the body parts, the white cells fight against bacteria acting as body shields and the platelets control bleeding rate and blood clotting.
Although stem cell transplants seem like a separate therapy, it is worth mentioning the fact that the blood and the bone marrow normally contain stem cells, but these get destroyed in cancer patients because of chemotherapy. The stem cell transplants thus represent a method of restoring the production of blood cells that would otherwise cease by lack of undifferentiated cells. Not all the cancer patients require stem cell transplants. In fact, there are several elements that decide whether such an intervention is necessary or not, and here we can count the stage of the disease, its intensity, the patient’s responsiveness to the treatment and the overall physical condition.
In the past, only younger patients were chosen for stem cell transplants, but at present, age is no longer such a relevant criterion. What does indeed matter is the health of the internal organs such as kidneys, heart and lungs as well as the performance status in the cancer therapy. There are several kinds of stem cell transplants but people have only heard of just a few. And cord blood transplants, peripheral stem cell blood transplants or bone marrow transplants make the most relevant examples. There are other more scientific ways of separating stem cell transplants into further categories but they usually serve more for research purposes.
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