Click here for information about outpatient transplantation in our new IPOP unit . Most treatment for CML is performed as an outpatient. Patients undergoing allogeneic or autologous BMT for CML may be hospitalized on a 24 bed unit specialized for the treatment of BMT patients. The nursing staff is highly trained in the care of BMT patients and in critical care. The unit is capable of providing conventional and intensive care.
All rooms are private with special air-filtering to decrease the risk of infections.
Some patients undergoing BMT now receive their transplants as outpatients in our new IPOP unit. Normal blood cells require growth factors like GM-CSF to grow Growth factors are now routinely given to patients after chemotherapy to shorten the period of time their counts are low. GM-CSF causes CML stem cells to mature, whereupon they appear to die. Thus, when bone marrow samples from patients with CML are incubated with CML, the CML stem cells die off, leaving mostly normal stem cells. This drug is considered to represent a new direction in the treatment of cancer by its ability to target only the myeloid cells and leave healthy cells unharmed.