What is the bone marrow used for?
Bone marrow has a vital role in our body, it is used to produce blood cells: red blood cells which carry oxygen, white blood cells which fight against infections, platelets which make it possible to stop bleeding. The bone marrow also makes the key cells of our immune system, lymphocytes. And be careful, we must not confuse the bone marrow and the spinal cord which is in our spine.
A bone marrow donation is therefore intended for people who have blood diseases?
Indeed, it gives an additional chance to people who suffer from blood cancers such as leukemia. It is a disease characterized by an abnormally high number of white blood cells in the blood. There are other rarer diseases that require a bone marrow transplant …
In France what are the needs?
Every year, there are nearly 2,000 new cases of serious blood diseases. And to date, there are already 197,000 people who have pledged to donate. But, they are not yet numerous enough to meet the demands. In fact, the whole difficulty lies in finding the right donor, the one who has a blood system compatible with that of the patient. It is very complex: the probability of finding two compatible individuals outside of the siblings is 1 chance in 1 million. This is why each new registration counts and brings an additional chance of recovery for the sick. 18,000 new volunteers must be recruited each year for the donor community to be rich and diverse enough …
Can anyone be a bone marrow donor?
You must be in perfect health, be between 18 and 50 years old when registering in the France Greffe de Moelle Register. The volunteer must also answer a medical interview and take a blood test.
And if these conditions are met, how does it go to make a donation?
This is done on demand only if a patient needs it, because a bone marrow donation cannot be put in reserve. There are two methods of sampling: either by puncture in the bones of the pelvis. It requires hospitalization. Or by a blood sample, without hospitalization. And this is possible because the donor is injected a week before the collection, a drug that releases stem cells from the marrow into the blood. But beware, it is the doctor who chooses the sampling method according to the patient’s condition …
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