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Bone Marrow Transplantation was 1st performed as a treatment part of aplastic anemia, leukemia, and specific lymphoma types. As the succes and techniques rates have improved, such surgery is used more wildely. For instance, some children with specific genetic disorders and some females who have breast cancer, are now receiving bone marrow transplant. When patients with cancer have radiation therapy or chemotherapy, normal bone marrow blood-producing cells may be destroyed together with the cells, which are cancerous. But in some cases, the person's bone marrow may be removed and after that reinjected after the person has recieved high chemotherapy doses. Thus, a person with cancer can be able to receive extremely high dosage of chemotherapy and radiation therapy to destroy all cancerous cells. If bone marrow is transplanted from the donors, the donor's HLA type should closely match the recipient's HLA type; therefore, the most likely donor is close family member. The Bone Marrow Transplantation procedure is simple. Commonly, while the donor is given general anesthesia, a surgeon is removing marrow from the bone of the hip by using syringe and preparing it for transplantation. The surgeon is then injecting the marrow into the vein of the recipient. Usually, if all is going well, the bone marrow of the recipient is completely replaced. Nevertheless, such surgical procedure is risky, because white blood cells of the recipient have been destroyed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. It is taking appr. two to three weeks for the transplanted bone marrow to create enough white blood cells to protect body against infection. The serious infection risk is high in such interval. Another complication is that a new bone marrow can produce Graft-Versus-Host Disease( immunologically active cell that is attacking the cells of host). Also, despite bone marrow transplants, a cancer can reoccur.
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