A bone marrow transplant is considered to treat the disease, only no matches pan out. Bone marrow transplantation is a fairly new medical procedure being used to treat diseases once thought incurable. Although bone marrow transplants have come a long way since their first successful use in 1968, they are still physically and emotionally taxing. Ranging in age from two months to 21 years, more than 2,000 children in the United States undergo a bone marrow transplant each year. While some of these factors can't be helped, increasing the pool of potential donors would clearly improve a patient's chances.
Bone marrow is a spongy tissue found inside the bones.
The bone marrow in the breast bone, skull, hips, ribs, and spine contains stem cells that produce the body's blood cells. The immature or defective blood cells interfere with the production of normal blood cells, accumulate in the blood stream, and may invade other tissues. However, these therapies not only kill the abnormal cells, they can also destroy healthy cells in the bone marrow. A bone marrow transplant replaces marrow destroyed by anticancer drugs and radiation with healthy marrow. In an autologous transplant, marrow is taken from the patient's own bones before treatment and then frozen so that after radiation treatment, it can be thawed and given back to the patient through a needle in a vein.