To date, some 2,000 cord blood transplants have been performed worldwide. They had been doing it on children for a while, but with adults, they had to tweak it. In September 2000, Atkinson became the first adult leukemia patient in Pennsylvania to receive an umbilical cord transplant. The cells were harvested from the cords of seven baby girls. And he's doing great.
All signs lead to everything working out.
To date, some 2,000 cord blood transplants have been performed worldwide. Three years ago, the New York Blood Center conducted the largest study of unrelated cord blood transplants to date and concluded that cord blood transplantation is a feasible procedure for patients who do not have a related matching donor. Yet many parents have never heard of the procedure.