Question about being a bone marrow donor

Most of your questions can be answered at http://www.marrow.org

rj

I have been thinking about becoming a bone marrow donor. My questions are about pain and do you have to be put to sleep or can you use a spinal or epidural? I have had 2 c-sections and I did well with the healing, is the pain level similar (I know it is a totally different area). I feel selfish worrying about it when I could save someone and make their life better. Also what are the risks? I would like to hear your experiences. Thank you.

i can tell you that my patients say..it is the doctor's technique. if the doc is not good at the procedure then it hurts. i have been present for many bone marrow aspirations and the pre-med will take the edge off but it can be uncomfortable. you will probably heal quickly and have very little bleeding or pain after the procedure. it is a local that they use at the site.what a wonderful thing to do..i have so many patients waiting for a match. good for you!!

I didn't realize that they did aspirations anymore. If we're talking about stem cells, I think they usually collect them peripherally.

Stem cells are collected by an apheresis machine that separates the donor's blood cells, but bone marrow donations are still collected by aspiration. Two different procedures. Depends on the variables of the individual patient and donor as to which one they collect.

I am a BMT nurse. You mentioned you have had c-sections. If you have given birth to a boy, you may not be a great candidate. The antibodies produced during pregnancy greatly increase the recipients chance of developing graft vs. host disease. The mortality rate for this type of transplant is huge (>70%). Look up GVHD before joining. I ultimately did not join for this reason but instead am haiving my husband register.

Also you will have to take colony stimulating factors prior to collection. They are a daily SQ injection that helps to mobilize the stem cells. The biggest complaint is bone pain as the marrow is being 'reved up'. CSFs have not been around long enough to know the long term s/e.

Bravo for you considering to do this, but just know the likelyhood of actually saving a life is slim. You may be able to help helping to recruit other, more suitable candidates.

there are approximately 10 million donors on the registry and the ideal hct donor is a young male donor or female that has never been pregnant. I believe antibodies are developed regardless of the sex of your baby. If there are several matches they would go with the most ideal donor. depending on ethnicity, there is an abundance for most Caucasions; however, this is certainly not the case for ethnic minorities.

if it is a bone marrow donation, G-CSF is not used. We use a general anaesthetic for our donors and we usually collect a litre of marrow depending on the recipients weight. tylenol 3's are given for discomfort and it usually takes 3-4 days to get back to normal related to discomfort of the procedure.