Bone marrow transplant

Injury	Disease	Nutrition	Poison

Symptoms	Surgery	Test	Special Topic

Bone marrow aspiration

Formed elements of blood

Bone marrow transplant

Definition:

A bone marrow transplant is a procedure to transplant healthy bone marrow into a patient whose bone marrow is not functioning properly. Problems in bone marrow are often caused by chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer. Bone marrow transplant is also done to correct hereditary blood diseases.

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The healthy bone marrow may be taken from the patient prior to chemotherapy or radiation treatment (autograft), or it may be taken from a donor (allograft).

Alternative Names:
Transplant - bone marrow
Description:

Bone marrow is a soft, fatty tissue inside the bones. This is where blood cells (red blood cells, platelets, and white blood cells) are produced and developed. In a disease of the blood cells -- especially cancers such as leukemia -- high doses of chemotherapy may be required to destroy the cancer. However, this also destroys normal blood cells.

In other cases in which hereditary or acquired disorders cause abnormal blood cell production, transplantation of healthy bone marrow may save a patient's life. Transplanted bone marrow will restore production of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets.

Bone marrow transplant patients are usually treated in specialized centers. The patient stays in a special nursing unit -- a bone marrow transplant unit, or BMT -- to limit exposure to infections.

Donated bone marrow must match the patient's tissue type. It can be taken from the patient, a living relative (usually a brother or a sister), or from an unrelated donor (found through the national marrow donor program). Donors are matched through special blood tests called HLA tissue typing. (See HLA antigens.)

Bone marrow is taken from the donor in the operating room while the patient is unconscious and pain-free (under general anesthesia). Some of the donor's bone marrow is removed from the top of the hip bone. The bone marrow is filtered, treated, and transplanted immediately or frozen and stored for later use. Then, transplant material is transfused into the patient through a vein (IV line) and is naturally transported back into the bone cavities where it grows to replace the old bone marrow.

Alternatively, blood cell precursors, called stem cells, can be induced to move from the bone marrow to the blood stream using special medications. These stem cells can then be taken from the bloodstream through a procedure called leukapheresis.