Tips For Choosing The Right Transplant Hospital

A transplant center or a transplant hospital is a healthcare facility that runs the marrow or blood transplant treatment program. Many of these healthcare facilities are also part of the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). They meet the quality criteria and guidelines for providing world-class transplant facilities and healthcare. If you need a bone marrow transplant, you would be looking for the right options and the best healthcare facilities for it. Below are certain tips that can help you choose the right and good health care facility for a transplant.

Seek More Information

You must gather more information regarding transplant centers in your region and country. In the USA, you may have to work with the insurance company or your doctor to find out more about the health care facilities and transplants centers that you should consider for a transplant.

Insurance cover: the insurance coverage and policy money may not be available for any of the hospitals. Your insurance coverage provider and company may require that you go to a specific hospital and transplant center. You must talk more regarding the matter with your insurance service representatives and the company. It is important to choose an appropriate center where you can get the insurance coverage money for the treatment.

Doctor recommendation: your doctor and physician may also recommend you a good transplant center. Doctors, physicians, and medical specialists belong to the same healthcare profession. Therefore, they have more knowledge regarding the best treatment facilities for different kinds of healthcare conditions including bone marrow or blood cancer. The information they have may not be available to other common people. You can trust the recommendation of your doctor as well and see whether the center that your doctor recommends is also a facility recommended by your insurance coverage provider. However, you should look into the HLA (Human Leukocyte Count) matching requirements of the treatment center as well.

Costs: there are many different costs associated with healthcare treatment and a transplant. These costs include the cost of donor search, treatment, accommodations, food, and other aspects of a transplantation health care treatment. However, these costs may also vary from one hospital to another. You can contact the financial coordinators of the transplant centers to know more about the total expenditure associated with the treatment and the bone marrow transplant.

 

Support services: the different hospitals providing leukemia bone marrow transplants may also offer certain support services. However, these support services may differ for the different hospitals. Some examples of support services include:

  • Availability of bilingual translators and staff to ensure that you are well informed and understand all the aspects of the treatment.
  • Care continuity with the doctor who refers you to the hospital.
  • Financial counselor service ensures that you are well informed about the insurance benefits and the costs.
  • Healthcare services at home.
  • Resources for the patients.

Get Second Opinion

You can also visit the transplant centers that you are now considering for treatment. You can meet the doctors, nurses, and others there and try to find out more about the center. If you know any trustworthy doctors and are well acquainted with them, you can also ask for their opinion. The more knowledge you have, the better option you can choose.

Conclusion

There are world-class transplant facilities in the USA where patients from across the world visit. However, you need to dig deeper and try to know more about these facilities and their various aspects to choose the best hospital and stem cell transplant center.

Contact Us:

Gift of Life Marrow Registry

Address: 800 Yamato Rd suite 101 Boca Raton, FL 33487
Phone: (800) 962-7769

Things to Know About Bone Marrow Transplant

Is any of your family members scheduled to go through a bone marrow transplant? Are you wondering what the entire process is all about? A bone marrow transplant helps in replacing damaged or destroyed stem cells with healthier cells. With this, a person’s body can produce an adequate amount of white blood cells, red blood cells, or platelets that prevent anemia or bleeding disorders, infections, etc. This article tells you details about the process.

What is meant by Bone Marrow Transplant?

It is a form of medical procedure which is typically performed to substitute a damaged or almost destroyed bone marrow. The process involves the transplantation of blood stem cells that go to the bone marrow to generate new blood cells helping in the growth of new marrow.

What are its different types?

Autologous Transplants

In these transplants, a person’s own stem cells are used. Before beginning with the damaging therapy, these transplants involve harvesting the cells. Once the treatment is over, the cells are returned to the patient’s body again. However, this kind of transplant is not always feasible. This can be done only if the patient possesses healthy bone marrow.

Allogeneic Transplants

These transplants require a donor to take the cells from. An important thing should be kept in mind here. In cases of such transplants, the donor must be a close genetic match. For this, a compatible relative is the most appropriate and preferred choice. You can also find genetic matches from a donor registry.

The success of such transplants depends on the close match of the donor cells with that of the patient’s. The closer the match, the more effective the transplant is.

How to get ready for Bone Marrow Transplant?

Before transplantation, the patient goes through several tests to find out the type of bone marrow cells required. In some cases, radiation or chemotherapy can also be given to a patient to destroy all the cancerous marrow cells before getting new stem cells.

Just a few days before the transplant, the patient will be given a tube-like structure known as a central venous catheter. This will be attached to a vein in the patient’s chest. This will be used to take blood and give medications. This tube will remain until the treatment is completed.

What is the procedure of Bone Marrow Transplant?

The process will start with conditioning. Generally, this includes a high dose of chemotherapy for about 10 days. This may or may not be accompanied by radiation. This process differs from person to person and depends largely on the overall health condition of the person undergoing treatment.

Conditioning promotes the growth of new cells in the blood cancer bone marrow transplant. After this, the patient goes under complete rest for a few days.

After this, the patient receives new blood stem cells with the help of the central venous catheter. As soon as the new cells arrive at the marrow, they grow into RBCs, WBCs, and platelets. This process of engraftment can take around 2-4 weeks.

 

Gift of Life Marrow Registry Also Offers Following Services :

Stem Cell Donation Near Me

Bone Marrow Registry Age

Bone Marrow Match Registry

Contact US:

Gift of Life Marrow Registry
Address:  800 Yamato Rd suite 101  Boca Raton, FL
Phone: (800) 962-7769

Pros And Cons Of Bone Marrow Transplant For Leukemia

You might have come across patients suffering from sickle anemia who have no other option but to go in for bone marrow transplant. Whether it is sickle cell anemia or other types of blood disorders and blood cancers, there are reasons to believe that bone marrow transplant could be the only option. When a person suffers from acute anemia including sickle cell anemia, over a period of time, his or her life could be under threat. This is because this form of anemia and other forms of blood cancers lead to a massive shortage of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. We need to understand these healthy cells are made in our bone marrow. The bone marrow is located within the hollow of our bones and they produce healthy red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets amongst other things. When a person gets impacted by various blood disorders, the bone marrow does not produce healthy cells and this leads to anemia and other problems.

What Are The Causes?

There are many reasons for the malfunctioning of the bone marrow transplant blood type match. It could be because of various forms of cancer, some hereditary blood conditions, side effects and reactions of some medicines, amongst other reasons. Hence, there is a need to correct the situation or else the patients could slip into severe anemia and face an acute shortage of blood cells and platelets.

What Is Leukemia Bone Marrow Transplant

Leukemia is a form of blood cancer where the healthy cells are destroyed by marauding cancer cells. This happens across the body and the bone marrow, in particular, is impacted very badly. Hence, the best option is to replace the damaged bone marrow cells with healthy ones. This is what leukemia bone marrow transplant is all about. This results in the bone marrow being able to produce healthy cells. A combination of other treatments with healthy bone marrow cells could help in retrieving the situation of the patient and might also reverse the symptoms and conditions associated with a bone marrow transplant.

Pros Of Bone Marrow Transplant

  •    It helps in replacing sick and damaged bone marrow cells with new ones.
  •    It could assist in overcoming the conditions and symptoms associated with leukemia and other forms of blood cancer.
  •    The process is simple and not very painful or complicated.
  •    The patient need not spend days in the hospital for any type of bone marrow transplantation.
  •    The success rate of bone marrow transplantation is quite encouraging.
  •    With newer technologies and methods, the process is not as expensive and cost-prohibitive as it was a few years ago.

Cons Of Bone Marrow Transplant

  •    Risk of rejection continues to be a major problem with a bone marrow transplant. The rejection can happen immediately or even after many weeks and months. Hence, there is a need to closely monitor the condition of the patient post such transplants.
  •    Risk of infection is another problem that continues to bother doctors and patients alike. Here again close and regular monitoring of the patient for the first few days and months is the only way out.

 

Contact US:

Gift of Life Marrow Registry
Address: 800 Yamato Rd suite 101 Boca Raton, FL
Phone: (800) 962-7769