Umbilical cord blood continues to save the lives of thousands of people each year. The hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) found in cord blood are particularly valuable and are used to treat nearly 80 life threatening diseases.
A 16-year-old leukaemia patient from San Antonio is the latest person to have been saved by a cord blood transplant. Jathan Rivas was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 2014, an aggressive form of cancer. When the disease did not respond to chemotherapy, Jathan’s doctor decided to use a cord blood transplant.
Dr. Troy Quigg, Jathans doctor, said of the procedure: “In these circumstances, we always turn to cord blood as a potential source of blood stem cells that we can use for a transplant,”. The transplant helped save Jathan’s life. He is in remission and happy to be at home and hanging out with his family.
The cord blood used came from a public cord bank, which stores donated cord blood from nearby hospitals. The Methodist Hospital and Methodist Children’s Hospital both encourage parents of newborns to donate their child’s umbilical cord blood, which is normally discarded as medical waste. The procedure of collecting umbilical cord blood is completely pain-free and risk-free for both mother and child.
The methodist hospital has been collecting and storing cord blood for over 10 years. During that time the stem cells collected have been used to treat dozens of patients with cancer and blood disorders.
Doctors encourage parents to donate their child’s umbilical cord blood to a public bank or to preserve it in a private cord blood bank, so their family can benefit from the precious stem cells it contains. More than 25,000 patients worldwide have received cord blood transplants and that number is expected to grow at a rapid rate as more stem cell treatments are being discovered.