Many people in India need bone marrow surgery. But luckily, we have many hospitals in India where a bone marrow surgery takes place through highly qualified surgeons. There are many conditions leading to the need for a bone marrow transplant.
Diseases that damage the bone marrow
The diseases such as lymphoma, leukaemia, multiple myeloma, and myelodysplasia will have the need for a bone marrow transplant. You need it because the bone marrow cells in your body remain damaged due to the disease. It could happen if you remain affected by a host of other diseases such as aplastic anaemia, sickle cell anaemia, thalassemia, severe immune system illness, congenital neutropenia, or any other disease that destroys the bone marrow or affects their production. You can consult the best doctors for bone marrow transplant in India and ask their opinion before you go ahead with the surgery.
When you use your own blood cells frozen beforehand for doing the transplantation, we refer to it as autologous stem cell transplant. Lymphoma of both kinds, non-Hodgkin, and Hodgkin are indications for transplant. Before they do the transplant they will do the assessment to see whether everything is alright. They give the patient a heavy dose of chemotherapy to subdue the disease. This evaluation will include the test of heart, liver, and lung to know that they are functioning well.
Stem cell stimulation
The stem cells of the donor undergo stimulation through the use of drugs. One example of this drug is Neupogen. They filter the blood cells out of circulation through an IV. Then, they store this in a freezer so they can use it when they need it. If you expose the stem cells to the chemotherapy, they will undergo damage and will remain unable to produce any blood cells for a long time. You have the top doctors for bone marrow transplant in India at the specialty hospitals in all big cities.
HLA typing of tissues
They infuse the collected stem cells into the blood of the patient. It takes 7 -10 days for the stem cells to begin producing marrow. Once the blood cell count is good the person can go home. Determining the donor remains done through the HLA typing of the blood and tissues. The HLA stands for Human Leukocyte Antigen. On the surface of all cells in your body, you have a series of proteins. These remain defined genetically and the degree of relatedness between the marrow of the donor and the recipient we see the similarity or disparity between the two series.
The immune system in the body can recognise any ‘foreign’ lymphoma and prepare to attack it. Also, the donor immune system can recognise the lymphoma as foreign. It also recognises the organs – liver, lung, skin, and GI tract as foreign and launches an attack against it. This is the graft versus host (GVHD) response. This GVHD response we control by using standard drugs.
The best donor is the one with the last degree of graft versus host disease. This is usually a sibling or a parent. We do the HLA matching by blood typing or you can do it with a swab from the inside of the mouth.
