What is a Bone Marrow Transplant?
What is a Bone Marrow Transplant?
Hematopoetic stem cells or Blood forming cells (blood stem cells) are immature cells that grow into red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, they are found in the soft tissue inside your bones called as Bone Marrow. When they mature, they leave the marrow and enter the bloodstream. In some diseases like cancer and its treatment, hematopoetic stem cells become unhealthy or get damaged, unable to effectively mature into different kind of cells essential for the body. In some other disease which have genetic basis, the bone marrow is unable to produce healthy cells of the blood or immune system.
Bone Marrow Transplant is not a surgery, the new cells go into your bloodstream through an intravenous catheter or tube, from there the cells will find their way into your marrow. A bone marrow transplant is a medical procedure that replaces ones unhealthy bone marrow with healthy cells, the replacement can either come from your own body or from that of a donor. A bone marrow transplant is also called as a stem cell transplant or in medical terms a hematopoetic stem cell transplant. it can take months or years to recover from Bone Marrow Transplantation
There are two types of Bone Marrow Transplants- autologous BMT where the healthy cells come from your own body, and allogenic BMT that uses a donor. The Donor has to be a family member who has a close match to the Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA) test like a sibling or a parent, in some cases a donor can be found from the Bone Marrow Transplant registry of the country.
A bone marrow transplant can be used to treat disease like leaukemia and lymphoma (Blood Cancers) and genetic disease like sickle cell anemia and Immuno deficiency disorders
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