Many people are familiar with the idea of a transplant. On the back of your driver’s license there likely to be a place where you can indicate that you’d like to be an organ donor, which means that if you are fatally injured, your body parts and tissues can be removed and transplanted into someone who is suffering from a damaged or diseased organ. When it comes to stem cell transplantation, the process is a little different, although the benefits for the person receiving the transplant can be every bit as life changing.

When a stem cell transplantation is performed correctly, it helps to infuse the body with health cells that the body can use to replace or destroy those cells that have become damaged or diseased. Conditions like cancer or Hodgkin’s disease can cause the count of healthy cells in the body to decrease rapidly. Without enough healthy cells, the body won’t be able replace tissues that are being attacked, and slowly it will lose its ability to fight the disease. When a transplant of health cells is possible, the body has a better chance of fighting off the diseased cells and recovering.

If you or someone you love is suffering from a life threatening disease, it’s likely that you’re ready to try anything to get on the road to recovery as soon as possible. If you’re considering a stem cell transplantation it’s important that you are aware of the risks as well as the benefits. Many people think that you can simply swap out some cells for others, but it’s important to remember that a person’s stem cells are unique to their own body. In some cases, stem cells that are donated get rejected by the patient’s body, because the system interprets them as a foreign attack.

If you want the stem cell transplantation to have the best possible chance of succeeding, it’s necessary to used stem cells from the umbilical cord blood of someone in the family. Stem cells harvested from the umbilical cord, which is usually discarded after birth, lack the developed immune cells that so many people’s bodies interpret as a threat to survival. Because of this, patients who have access to umbilical cord stem cells have an eighty-five percent chance of recovering with no appearance of graft versus host disease, which can cause nausea, abdominal pain, rash, and even death. If you have a history of cancer in your family, you might consider storing the cord blood from your next pregnancy.

Learn more about stem cell transplant Procedures and Purposes