![]() This will usually be no earlier than twelve months after the transplant. Your doctor will assess when your immune system has recovered enough to allow you to be re-vaccinated as the vaccinations need to be able to stimulate the immune system to work. These include measles, mumps, rubella and polio. In general, following an allogeneic transplant you will lose the immunity to many of the diseases you were vaccinated against as a child. Some side effects can persist for months and occasionally years after the transplant. During this time you are likely to experience some of the common sideeffects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy which may include nausea, vomiting, mucositis (sore mouth) and bowel problems (diarrhoea). Red blood cell transfusions are given when haemoglobin levels are too low. Antibiotics and other drugs are commonly prescribed to help prevent or treat infections during this time, and you are likely to need platelet transfusions to reduce the risk of bleeding. During this time you will be more at risk of infections (due to the lack of infection-fighting white blood cells) and bleeding (due to a lack of platelets). Your blood counts initially drop dramatically in the week following conditioning therapy. This process is known as engraftment and it takes anywhere between 10 and 28 days, depending on the type of transplant you have. From here the stem cells make their way to your bone marrow where they set up home and begin to repopulate the bone marrow with families of immature white cells, platelets and red cells. You may also need to see other specialists depending on your particular circumstance.Īfter you have finished conditioning, the donated stem cells are infused through a vein into your blood stream. potential post-transplant complicationsĭuring the weeks leading up to your transplant you will undergo a number of tests to make sure that your vital organs (heart, lungs, liver and kidneys) are physically fit enough for the transplant process.The process of a stem cell transplant can be divided into these nine different stages: A transplant involves a lot of preparation and a lot of aftercare. It is important to realise that the processes involved in a stem cell transplant are often long and complex. This may be an option for older people and others who could benefit from receiving donated stem cells but for whom a standard allogeneic transplant would be considered too risky. This is also called a nonmyeloablative transplant, because the treatment used doesn’t completely destroy your bone marrow. As such, allogeneic transplants are usually not suitable for all patients.Ī “mini-allogeneic” or “reduced intensity” transplant uses less intensive and therefore less toxic chemotherapy. The complexities and risks may be increased even more with a mismatched or volunteer unrelated donor (VUD) transplant. They are complex procedures that carry significant risks. It is hoped that these cells will also attack and destroy all traces of the underlying disease.Īllogeneic transplants can offer the best chance of curing a number of blood and bone marrow cancers and other diseases. The cells of the donor’s immune system ( white blood cells) are transplanted along with the donor’s stem cells. ![]() ![]() In an allogeneic transplant the donor’s healthy stem cells are used to replace the patient’s unhealthy ones (which have been damaged by disease) by giving high doses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy used to treat the underlying disease. Sometimes there is a slight mismatch, but it may still be the best possible match for the patient. Where no sibling is available, a search is made of Australian and overseas donor registries to find a suitably matched unrelated stem cell donor. This is usually a sibling with the same tissue type as the patient. In an allogeneic transplant, stem cells are donated to the patient from another person who is a genetically matched stem cell donor. What is an allogeneic stem cell transplant?
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